Events

SLEIGH BELLS are just a duo — Derek on beat production, guitars, and songwriting; Alexis Krauss on vocals — but their tracks ram together many sonic worlds. Their electronic beats thud with gut-rattling low end; guitars are distorted siren squalls, or heavily gated and thoroughly crunched power chords, or playful, beta-band-esque strums. Krauss flips easily from hip-hop hook, to pop power, to sunshined, coquettish coos.

Past members of Sleigh Bells went on to form buzz-band Surfer Blood. Derek’s old hardcore band Poison The Well toured with Give Up The Ghost, the defunct hardcore outfit of past BTW Cold Cave’s Wes Eisold. Alexis Krauss is a school teacher with a pop-singer past. All of which gives certain strength to their reinvention in this excellent new outfit.

Their combustible pop is finely razed by Alexis Krauss’s outsized yet totally natural stage presence.