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The 10 New Faces Of 2011

With the festivities having long come to a close, the Christmas crackers been pulled, and the awful jokes that go with them hopefully told for the last time, we begin to prepare ourselves for a new year. As 2011 gets underway, our resolution remains the same, to keep you up to date with the most important developments in music. With that in mind, here are ten acts you are likely to be hearing a lot more of in the next twelve months...

Have a closer look at The 10 New Faces of 2011 in our gallery

Having formed just down the road from one of the biggest bands in the world, Kings Of Leon, this four-piece from Nashville, Tennessee, are visually everything the romanticised deep South of America nostalgically reminisces over. But despite appearing to be Southern gents, these boys are unlikely to be playing friendly bluegrass jingles, although they may well have a thing for moonshine and bar brawls.

Frontman Nick Brown couldn't be more Tennessee. His body tight white t-shirts, designed to subtly show off the guns, and his combed back quiff, recall a slight resemblance to Tennessee Williams' original Stanley Kowalski, as played by an early Marlon Brando. Just as he defined 50's Hollywood with a rebellious image revolving around cigarrettes and whiskey, so too Mona embrace this alternative fighting spirit, challenging the role of music. ""We want to make people fall in love with a band and an album again, the whole idea," proclaims Brown like a visionary.

Debut single Listen To Your Love was a riff-laden rock riot which hinted towards the energy of Springsteen as well as becoming the soundtrack to a '50s video montage, placing the band alongside the decade's notable faces, from Elvis to Marilyn Monroe, with Betty Boop even making an appearance. Mona are ready to become just as recognisable and revered to the next decade as the black and white on-screen icons they hold so dearly. As believers in this band grow exponentially, the power lying beneath the denim deviance knows no bounds. "We're just four dudes banging on instruments but look at John Lennon, Bob Marley, or Bob Dylan. A song can change the whole fucking planet."

Read Qthemusic's very own interview with Mona here

This 22-year-old producer provides the missing link between Burial, The XX and Feist, with his soulful take on electronica.

Raised in an "arty" family in Enfield, North London, the 6'5" Blake studied popular music at Goldsmith's college. He also discovered nightclubs. Though he was fascinated with the sounds he was hearing, it did little for his social life. "When I first went to a dubstep night I completely forgot I was with my friends," he says. "I ended up dancing for about three hours on my own."

While currently concentrating on his own, mulitilayered vocals, previous EP, CMYK, sampled Kelis and Blake retains an admiration for troubled crooner R Kelly. "He's a boderline post-modern genius," he says. "And his voice...in R&B terms, he's up there with the greats."

Given his feel for minimalist, sonic subtleties and his ability to hint at emotions lurking just beneath the surface, Blake has already drawn favourable comparisons with The XX. He laugh's off suggestions that he's dubstep's answer to the Mercury Prize winners though: "I'm not going to pigeonhole myself for you!"

She is pirate radio siren turned mainstream hit-maker, Katie Brien. Her debut single, Katy On A Mission, recently landed at number 5 in the UK charts. The South Londoner first sketched songs while playing the piano at home. She later sharpened her writing skills on a music course at the Brit School. Recognition arrived when she started singing over dubstep and garage cutss at pirate radio station Rinse FM.

Brien made pocket money writing tracks for DJ hopefuls while at university. "I'd go to Rinse every Wednesday because there were always producers with tracks that needed lyrics and vocals," she says. "I would write the lyrics and sing them for £30," she recalls. In 2007, the Brit School took a soul, Latin and world music production to Glastonbury. "We played on one of the smaller stages," says Brien. "I sang River Deep, Mountain High and some Marvin Gaye stuff at three in the morning."

Despite contributing vocals to Magnetic Man's single, Perfect Stranger, she's keen not to be located in one dance genre. "I'm a mash of the UK underground sound," she says. "My album is impossible to categorise. Some people might think it's pop, others might think it's dubstep or house."

Even before releasing their sprightly debut single Wreckin Bar (Ra Ra Ra) on 29 November, this London four-piece had been the talk of their hometown. In fact their first London show saw 200 people make it inside the intimate Flowerpot venue while a similar sized crowd, including Kaiser Chief, Nick Hodgson, were turned away at the door. Anticipation is building behind a band hotly-tipped to become the British Strokes.

Fredddie Cowan (guitar), Pete Robertson (drums), and Árni Hjӧrvar (bass), are soaking up the pressure, along with frontman Justin Young (vocals, guitar) who will be recognisable to some as Jay Jay Pistolet. His new outfit labour's less over sensitive lyrics, favouring immediate impact. If a song took longer than a couple of hours to get right in practice it would be scrapped. "We want to make a record that sounds like a first record," says Young. "We're not trying to make Kid A."

Wreckin Bar (Ra Ra Ra) is a mixture of Blitzkreig Bop punch and classic '50s cafe diner riffs, all drenched in vocal reverb. With only this single to their name so far though they're being careful not to let themselves get caught up in the groundswell of hype, and have even put a ban of self-googling. It's all damage control for a group who've seen the snakes and ladders of the music industry up close. "Jay Jay Pistolet was my internship," says Young. "The one benefit of having friends who've done well and who've done not so well is that I've seen what they've done right and wrong. I know you can be led up a hill to fall off a cliff. We're determined not to let it happen."

Listen to The Vaccines debut single here

Nika Roza Danilova is a 21-year-old whose haunting vocals and swirling, electronic atmospherics are located midway between Florence Welch and Siouxsie And The Banshees. Raised in a conservative town in Wisconsin, when she created an alter-ego by combining the names of French writer Emile Zola and Jesus Christ, it didn't go down well. "I wanted to alienate myself at school," she says. "It worked perfectly - a lot of people wouldn't even say Zola Jesus because they thought it was sacrilegious."

She is specifically a fan of '70's Italian horror. "They have this mysterious, psychedelic quality," she enthuses. Much the same could be said about this year's expanded EP Sridulum II. "I want to write about things that are important, like why we're here, what the future holds and the apocalypse," she says. "Maybe the apocalypse has already started. If you look around in America, there's a lot of sadness and a lot of suffering. Most people turn a blind eye to it. I want people to come to terms with it."

Despite her gloomy outlook, penchant for wearing black and the dark undertow running through her music, she does not take kindly to being labelled a goth. "What would be the point of making goth music?" she says. "It's already been done. I'm trying to do something more progressive."

They are a guitar-toting, San Diego four-piece with twisted pop hooks and heart-crushed anthems on tap. Coming together in 2008, Transfer's latest line-up comprises of founder members, Jason Cardenas (guitar, vocals) and Matthew Molarius (vocals, guitar) plus new recruits, Shaun Cornell (bass) and Andy Ridley (drums). Recently self-released debut album, Future Selves, via their website.

"We grew uo with the four basic food groups of music," says Cardenas. "The Beatles, the Stones, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, but we love some weirder bands such as Deerhoof and Deerhunter. In our songs we lean towards a triumphant vibe with a heavy afterglow."

Brandon Flowers booked them as support on his recent UK tour, it's a connection that goes way back to the early days of Transfer. "We've always had a link with The Killers," says Cardenas. "Shaun and Andy had projects that toured with them and Dave Keuning comes to our shows. When we heard Brandon was going on tour we offered support."

Though the band are currently functioning on the club circuit, Cardenas has grander ambitions for Transfer. "I think we know what it takes to put on a big show," he says. "We're comfortable in a small sweaty bar, drinking beer, saying, cheers! But we feel good on the bigger stages, too."

Jermaine Lamarr Cole is a 25-year-old MC producer equipped with slick rhymes and the sizeable responsibility of being Jay-Z's first signing to new label Roc Nation.

Cole laid down raps over homemade beats from age 15 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, before relocating to New York. "I didn't want my location to be an excuse for failure," he says. "Too many amazing Southern rappers disappear because they're not brave enough to compete where it counts." A mixtape found its way to Jay-Z's hands. "That first meeting, all I can remember is having to wipe my hands a million times," he recalls. "I was praying, please don't let me meet Jay-Z with sweaty ass palms."

Debut single Who Dat recalled the cerebral swagger or Nas, but expect a far from generic rap set from his first album, due early 2011. "I'm talking about real-life issues, and not it the 'keeping it real' way. I mean universal topics hip hop artists don't think are cool like relationship ups and downs, everyday problems with work and your friends."

Things could have been very different for J.Cole, having originally been born outside the US. "I was born in Frankfurt, Germany," he reveals. "I have these flash memories from that first year of my life. I'm just glad it's just flashbacks and not a bratwurst addiction."

They are enigmatic byfriend-girlfriend duo: 21-year-olds guitarist/vocalist Brian Oblivion and singer Madeline Follin. Think '60s girl-group harmonies unsettlingly contorted through a murky, lo-fi filter.

The pair met in their native San Diego in summer 2009. Weeks later, they relocated to New York and started writing music, united by a love of the Shangri-Las and '60s teen pop singer Lesley Gore. Posting tracks on Facebook for friends, the indie blogosphere picked up on the MP3s and was soon whipped into frothy hysteria. Deluged with record company offers (Oblivion: "One label wanted to dress us in outfits that would put Lady Gaga to shame"), Cults recently inked a deal with new Sony imprint In The Name Of.

Follin's stepfather played in Californian punk band Youth Gone Mad, and as a nine-year-old, she lent her larynx to the song Touching Cloth featuring punk icon Dee Dee Ramone. "I was offered a record contract," she says. "But because I was singing about drinking gin, my dad wouldn't let me sign it."

Cults have no myspace page plus a near impossible-to-Goolge name. "We try to attack it like bands in the '60s and'70s, when you don't know what they're doing but fill it in with yourr own fantasy," says Oblivion. "That's more fun to us than modern-day Twitter culture."

These South Manchester teenagers make genre-shifting electronic music for the ADD afflicted. Debut EP, Some Reptiles Grew Wings, mixes catchy, Cure-influenced indie with electro-funk basslines and robotic synth-pop.

Former school friends Alex Hewett (vocals), Alex Pierce (drums), Nick Delap (bass) and Lou Stevenson-Miller (guitar) formed Egyptian Hip Hop in 2009. Still aged just 18, Pierce missed the band's debut performance because of a school trip to Stonehenge which is, "well better than playing a gig," according to Hewett. Speaking to Egyptian Hip Hop is maddening: They talk over each other, they babble nonsense about snails, crabs and turtles and say their as-yet-unrecorded debut LP will have the vague theme of "Moomin music."

Sporting geometric haircuts and lairy shirts, the band's fashion sense doesn't go unnoticed in their nose-less bohemian hometowns of Marple, New Mills and Bramhall. "Scallies don't like the way we look," says Hewett. "That's how I lost half my front tooth." The four recently "borrowed" 35 duvets from the storage cupboard of a hotel with the intention of "building a den". "Again, we're 18 years old," says Hewett, with a glower.

Two years ago while staying in New York, fledgling singer-songwriter Clare Maguire found herself having drinks with Jay-Z at the restaurant he owns in Manhattan. The superstar invited her personally over for drinks. She was, as you can imagine, pleasantly surprised. "He said he'd heard my music, and that he really liked it," she recounts, her eyes still wide with a trace of disbelief. "That was nice of him but, I don't know, perhaps he had just been told to say that?"

Given that, just two days earlier, Maguire had performed for 200 executive types at Universal Music's Manhattan offices - the label at which Jay-Z once had a major stake - this is unlikely. "I asked Jay-Z how he could spot star quality, and he said it was all in the eyes," she relates. "He looked at mine and told me he could see it in me."

Born in Birmingham into a large second-generation Irish family, Maguire was seven years old when she wrote her first song. By 13 she was talking music very seriously indeed. "I was always going into record shops and asking older people exactly what I should be listening to," she says. It was this way that she discovered not only the likes of Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan but also blues, gospel, and folk singers that had influenced them. Consequently, she was one of the few '90s teenagers in Birmingham au fait with Howlin' Wolf and 1930's gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

At 17, Maguire left home and arrived in London, friendless and penniless and lived in a succession of B&B's. By day she worked in Topshop while nights were spent sat in front of her laptop posting up demos on Myspace. In this she was inordinately successful, racking up 1.5 million hits within a year, and securing first a manager, then a deal.

She was however in no particular rush. Having spent two long years working on the songs for her album in order to ensure that it emerged as close a representation of herself as possible. It was for this reason that she turned down tunes offered to her from both Jarvis Cocker and Plan B. "They are great songs, don't get me wrong," she assures, "but I wanted this record to have a very singular character - essentially mine," she says. "When I signed my record deal, my reaction was odd. I felt almost nothing at all. I think I realised, then and now, that I've still got everything to prove, and not just to myself."

11:24 AM | 19/01/2011