Pitch Music Showcase Guide

Flee the Seen Flee the Seen's 2006 debut full-length, Doubt Becomes the New Addiction, opens with the 45-second track "Celebrate the Static," all air-raid guitars and banshee wails. The band's frenetic live sets often start with this song, during which band members jerk their bodies like possessed androids. After the initial jolt, Doubt delivers 10 melodic, hopeful hardcore tunes, with singers Kim Anderson and R.L. Brooks swapping screamed encouragements. Onstage, the band's constant motion ensures that even its catchiest, most sweet-natured songs sweat. www.fleetheseen.com

ROCK/POP The Roman Numerals The Roman Numerals form a sturdy bridge between angled indie rock and throbbing underground club music. The savagely catchy postpunk quartet is best seen opening a show at the Record Bar, which singer-bassist Steve Tulipana and keyboardist Shawn Sherrill co-own. With riffs that jostle listeners like violent waves, keyboards that whisper like the receding tide and drums that demand movement, the Roman Numerals usually outshine the headliners. Most of the band's recent shows have previewed tracks from the album due in September on the local label Anodyne. www.the romannumerals.com

Doris Henson Before Doris Henson hit the scene, the trombone hadn't sounded cool since ... well, the trombone never sounded all that cool, really. Enter Mike Walker, the hippest 'boner we've ever seen. With Walker's help, the five-piece Henson has become the best non-ska horn band in the city, dishing up heaping helpings of low-key vocals — courtesy of boyish lead singer Matt Dunehoo — over hook-laden guitar pop. Throw in a killer album (Give Me All Your Money) and a calendar full of shows, and you have one of the hardest-working bands in the city. www.doris henson.com

Ghosty When a member of the Flaming Lips gives his seal of approval to your band, you've officially become something. In the case of Lawrence's Ghosty, that distinction came in 2005, when Lips frontman Wayne Coyne lent his voice to the final track on the band's melancholy masterpiece, Grow Up or Sleep In. But in the four years before rock's quirkiest three-piece gave its thumbs-up, frontman Andrew Connor and company were already creating some of the Midwest's most lush, decadent indie rock. www.ghostymusic.com

Minus Story Minus Story has been absent from its Lawrence stomping grounds lately. Its nationally released Heaven and Hell EP and No Rest for Ghosts LP have kept the indie-rock quartet in high demand. Recently returning from a set of dates with John Vanderslice, the band is getting ready to record its next album. (There's also a Jordan Geiger solo project in the works.) With its upcoming European tour called off, plan on seeing a lot more of Minus Story in the months to come. www.minus-story.com

The Architects Having weathered numerous injurious record-label relationships (mostly in its previous incarnation as the Gadjits), the Architects could have spewed bilious self-pity on 2006's Revenge. Instead, the group funnels its angry energy into emphatic statements of resilience. Every enormous drum thump and bass quake, every guitar snarl and yowled chorus, every note of this exhilaratingly efficient 35-minute album defiantly announces the Architects' undiminished vitality. The band's maximum R&B might not have registered with the West Coast Warped Tour witnesses it encountered this summer, but regardless of crowd size or setting, the Architects' members play as though their souls were at stake. www.architects-rock.com