Real Estate, M.L. King and The Juniors, Sideshow Tragedy

Real Estate is from New Jersey—Ridgewood, to be exact, a not-quite-unposh suburban enclave 10 miles from the New York State border.

"Everybody's dad works on Wall Street," explains singer/guitarist Martin Courtney. "Not really, but that's the vibe—moms driving Escalades, 14-year-old kids going to Starbucks."

This isn't exactly Springsteen territory: no muscular odes to running away and screwing and working union jobs till your back breaks. Instead, the quartet evokes the sort of sun-soaked suburbia wherein you hoard your post-wisdom-teeth-extraction Vicodin and snort it all at once on a perfect July afternoon while riding your bicycle and listening to songs full of jangling guitars and weird, reverb-heavy good vibrations.

As such, the band's just-released, self-titled full-length is the perfect soundtrack for an economy in collapse: Legions of overeducated, underemployed college grads are living in their parents' house again with no jobs and no hope, so why not crack that spiked lemonade and start a fucking band already?