Sissy

Though the Knife's forthcoming Silent Shout will soon overtake Sissy's All Under in the interesting-and-weird-girl-fronted-electronica sweepstakes, this duo from Toronto, Canada, is deserving of its own prize for meritorious experimentalism. Johanne Williams and David Trusz use old-school Moogs, Oberheims, tape-delay machines, and band-pass filters as anti-digital calling cards, yet Trusz's deployment of ominous booms, echoes, and superlow (as in twenty) beats-per-minute rhythm tracks and Williams's breathy yet vaguely threatening scatty vocals truly set Sissy apart. Many songs recall nothing so much as the early ("Harold and Cindy Hospital") work of the Severed Heads or, on the danciest number, "In the Dark" — Blancmange (now there's a group in need of historical re-evaluation) on a nod-out dose of fentanyl.