Three 65, Day 44
Sleigh Bells, Treats

Sleigh Bells slay, simple as that. They sound like what would happen if the Powerpuff Girls smoked angel dust and were unleashed on Ministry's battery of studio sound effects.

Treats is their first and only LP, and boy, is it a doozy. Their basic sound involves a lot of distortion, furious guitars, clattery percussion, and the vocals of Alexis Krauss, who sounds like a vapid teenage bombshell in the mold of, oh, say, Lindsay Lohan?

That's okay, though - it's kind of the point. The dichotomy produced by the vocals and music is sharp enough to make your ears bleed. "Tell 'Em" blasts off like a jet fighter; "Rill Rill" rides a wave of victorious synths into a sea of vapid vocals. And "Straight A's" is just psychotic, as Krauss screams what sounds like "Ain't got sleep / I got straight A's!"

The album closes with the title track, which M.I.A., who first "found" Sleigh Bells, used as a basis for her song "Meds And Feds." Here, the drums just pound like sledgehammers, proving this band to be a two-person wrecking crew. Although a little more maturity could go a long way in this group's hands, the fact that Sleigh Bells don't take themselves very seriously - and sound great doing it - is a blast of fresh air in a cloud of over-indulgent hipsters.