Turbo ACs

This New York City trio has been out schlepping the gear, getting the $50 from the bartender, sleeping on a stranger's floor, and doing it all over again the next 50 nights for close to 10 years now. It's paid off a little better for them in Europe, where their slicked-back pompadours, black leather jackets, and gnarly tattoos approximate a street-tough cool that's one of the last things Euros like about America.

Though the Turbo ACs' look seems more cartoonish than credible over here, and their Supersuckers/Social Distortion-style motorpunk is très '95, there's no denying the sheer pummeling power the band has honed to a razor's edge with all that touring. Unlike many of their Gearhead labelmates, Turbo's teen days were undoubtedly spent at N.Y.C. hardcore matinees, as they don't go for the scruffy edges and blatantly '60s hooks of the garage gaggle they're easily lumped into. Witness their latest, Avenue X, out soon in Europe first, of course. Unoriginal only if you've tired of the egalitarian economics of Pabst Blue Ribbon, the Turbo ACs will do the trick.