Cute Is What We Aim For

Buffalo's Cute Is What We Aim For is likely the perfect 21st-century pop band. Almost purpose-built for short-attention-span marketing campaigns, CIWWAF focuses so heavily on pop sheen, hooks and scenester touchstones that it's often difficult to figure out just what the sum of the parts is. But, for a generation of kids raised on YouTube clips instead of movies, MP3s instead of albums and text-messaging instead of note-writing, a band that sounds like a highlight-reel montage is just what the doctor ordered.

Like pieces of artificially flavored candy, each CIWWAF musical confection lasts just long enough to get a taste and not long enough to figure out that all of those flavors were engineered by men in lab coats in a factory off the Jersey Turnpike. Historically, it's actually an interesting throwback to the '60s, where bands found favor by assimilating bits and pieces of whatever was trendy at the time, never really fleshing out a sound of their own. Functioning like a prism, CIWWAF absorbs the white light of modern pop music, scattering it back to their fans in a million brilliant, though evanescent, shards of color.