10 Best Mississippi Bandcamp Acts

Any kind of music you could ever want is on Bandcamp.com. The problem, of course, is finding what you like: There are so many artists on the page that it's hard to tell where to start.

If you're short on time, you might try these ten projects, which vary in scope from electronica to grindcore, but all have Mississippi origins in common:

 1. Blacktop Island

Fuzzed-out '60s drone in both iterations: "Bored To Death" is a proto-stoner gunk jam, and "You Won't Show" is an easy alliance of British Invasion sensibility and garage-rock signifiers. 

2. Choices Made

"This World" by Choices Made

Hardcore punk ain't nothin' if it's unintelligible. Choices Made know this, recalling the impassioned vocal styles of Dan O'Mahony and Pat Dubar, with enough deviation from the chugga-chugga formula to keep things engaging in the pit. X up!

3. Flight

"Turns to Blood" by Flight

The cover of their "Flowers" digital 7-inch boasts dudes covered in mud, and a Boris Karloff–looking mummy. There's nothing undead or resurrected about their music, which welds the demented heft of Butthole Surfers' psych to hooky pop à la Matthew Sweet. It does sound dirty, so there's that.

4. Furrows

"Vultures (Live)" by Furrows

This is the kind of talented, well-arranged, occasionally heavy-ish pop music that could sell thousands of pairs of khakis with the right placement. And I mean that as a compliment. The classic rock inflections in "Vultures" alone could sell flares, whenever they come back in style.

5. ICG

"Mono" by ICG

The kind of achingly gorgeous synth music, which, like Kraftwerk's best, forms a perfect soundtrack for long, snowy drives.

6. The Incident

These cats know how to juxtapose: Their ambient compositions, lush and quiet, are interrupted by melodic passages with the same kind of disturbing intensity as the Clockwork Orange soundtrack's darkest moments—and that's not even taking the beyond-creepy vocal samples into account.

7. Mono Lisa

"No Windows/The Wind Blows" by Mono Lisa

One-person Bandcamp projects are a dime a dozen. This one, the pseudonym of a guy by the name of Nicholas Lowery, transcends the stultifying twee sameness of lo-fi bedroom recording through his inclusion of shimmering walls of noise, Tom Waits clank, and distorto drone.

8. Neurotoxist

"Cravings of a Madman" by Neurotoxist

As evil-sounding as the name suggests: ridiculous tech-guitar leads adding color (black, as in metal) to jud-jud headbang drapery, with growled (but still intelligible) Cookie Monster vocals, and a drummer who plays at six zillion beats a minute.

9. Scuzzy Data

"Inflatable Diver" by Scuzzy Data

I have no idea what to call this conglomeration of circuit-bending, atonal glitchy samples, and layers of noise forming and reforming (maybe) phantom sounds. Glitchcore? Ill-fi? Regardless, this is wildly disorienting and inventive stuff.

10. The Weeks

"Hearts Got Soul" by The Weeks

Americana, in its many forms—jangle, honky-tonk stomp, syncopation, wanderlust—united by guitar crunch and more hooks than a tackle box.