Pitch Music Showcase Guide

Sons of Brasil Not to knock a good thing, but when your town is known for its legendary jazz, a lot of those bands can start to sound awfully similar. That's not the case with Sons of Brasil. By incorporating the upbeat, samba-influenced styles of — you guessed it — Brazil into the Kansas City jazz template, the Sons have created a sound that's anything but the usual. It's a taste of Rio that you just won't find anywhere else in the city. www.stanton kessler.com

Son Venezuela For more than a decade, the 10-piece known as Son Venezuela has been showing the Midwest what real salsa music is all about, thanks in part to its hip-shaking live shows and memorable albums. It's no surprise, then, that almost every Latin band that emerges from this area tends to draw immediate comparisons with the group. Which must be tough, really, because Son Venezuela's bongo-pounding, high-energy shows have set the bar very high all across the central plains. www.sonvenezuela.com

Mafia Norteña Mafia Norteña knows all the corners of the corridos, (story songs) of Mexcio's accordion-driven norteña music, but its specialty is narcocorridos, songs of drug traffickers from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border who, like the bad guys in Westerns, are always way more interesting than their white-hat counterparts. The opiates are harsher, but narcocorridos aren't that far removed from "The Long Black Veil" or "Folsom Prison Blues," and Mafia Norteña's tales are delivered in ways that have won them fans on both sides of the border. www.mafia-nortena.com

LIVE ACT The Architects See ROCK/POP

Doris Henson See ROCK/POP

The Esoteric See HARDCORE/METAL

The Litigators (the Pink Socks) It's hard not to feel wiped out after watching Jeremiah Kidwell perform. As the harmonica-wielding frontman of the Litigators, recently reincarnated as the Pink Socks, he brings back the bravado and stage presence of rock legends such as Chuck Berry, Elvis and Mick Jagger (in their prime, of course). No matter what moniker he's working under, Kidwell is determined to leave you drenched in sweat from his tireless showmanship and his band's R&B-infused brand of garage rock. www.the litigators.net

Bacon Shoe With lyrics such as I grew up in Lee's Summit, where no one's got your back and a stage show that features two MCs and a guy in a bulldog costume, Bacon Shoe is a slightly more ironic, infinitely more fucked-up version of Reggie and the Full Effect for the hip-hop crowd. Could this be KC's next Rhymesayers sign-on? Probably not. But once you get past all the poop-joke rhyming and the beef with Kenny Rogers, the Shoe is some surprisingly likable shit. www.mindsundercover.com

MALE VOCALIST Matt Dunehoo (Doris Henson) With his rail-thin, mop-topped looks and swaggering stage presence, Doris Henson frontman Matt Dunehoo is a dead ringer for a young Mick Jagger — without any of the lecherousness, of course. Dunehoo's singing style is a world apart, though. Soft, honey-soaked vocals and thought-provoking lyrics stand in stark contrast to the ringing guitars crashing all around him. It may be the trombone that separates Doris Henson from the crowd, but it's Dunehoo's voice that makes the band memorable. www.doris henson.com

Thom Hoskins (Buffalo Saints, Blackpool Lights) Thom Hoskins is one of those singers (and guitar slingers) who seems to show up everywhere. His voice is both subtle and subconsciously invasive, and it's easy to hear why so many bands want him around. Whether delivering rough-hewn stories for the rootsy Buffalo Saints, unapologetic harmonies for Jim Suptic's frustration rock in the Blackpool Lights, or brittle pop for the Belles (with whom he no longer performs full time), Hoskins has the talent to write and carry the tune himself and make other people's songs even better. www.myspace.com/buffalo saints, www.blackpoollights.com

Andrew Connor (Ghosty) The rest of Ghosty's lineup may have changed — and changed frequently — over the past half-decade, but singer and spiritual founder Andrew Connor has remained the same. Well, maybe "the same" isn't a fair assessment. Since the band's inception, the saccharine-voiced Connor, a talented musician with an ear for the avant-garde, has taken his pet project from a lo-fi two-piece to a deeply layered musical experiment that's never shied away from risk-taking. www.ghostymusic.com

Brandon Phillips (Architects) Once a snotty-voiced teen paying homage to his school-bus driver, Brandon Phillips evolved into a smooth ska crooner and then, on the Architects' first album, a ruggedly soulful rock-and-soul revivalist. On this year's Revenge, his experience-frayed voice gains gravity and urgency, as though a minister known for genially spreading the gospel started passionately exhorting his congregation about an impending apocalypse. Phillips' serrated shouts never grate or distract from the song structures because his band plays furiously enough to make his intensity seem entirely appropriate. www.architects-rock.com

Shaun Hamontree (American Catastrophe) The Nick Cave and Tom Waits comparisons fly left and right whenever American Catastrophe frontman Shaun Hamontree's name comes up. But let's get it straight: The guy's Manilow to the core. Just kidding. Hamontree's rusted-pitchfork bellow could summon demons from hell to trash the Copacabana and impregnate all the women with devil spawn; when he drops the bear growl and begins belting, he sounds like Satan's got a hold of his leg and is pulling him down. Perhaps most impressive, however, is that Hamontree is one of the only lead singer-guitarists in town who can conduct an absolutely killer show while seated in a chair, sweating into a bullet mic like a wounded preacher the whole time. www.myspace.com/amcat