After the initial buzz from the first two Vampire Weekend LP's died down, maybe you thought the garage-rock revival sound had been filed under 'fad' indefinitely. Alas, there does still exist some excellent bands - who have emerged from various garages all over the U.S. - and who deserve a place in your cultural firmament. Here are three.

Pangea

Recently name-checked by non other than, country-alt-rock-singer-songwriter-producer extraordinaire, Ryan Adams as his "favorite band in the whole world." No pressure then, eh? But don't just take Mr. Adam's word for it, listen to the super infectious I Wrote a Bible, and try not to tap your feet. Pangea have been around for a while, they released their debut, "Living Dummy" in 2010. However it was mostly drown out by umpteen other bands that kinda sounded like them, the beauty of...

In second grade a book found its way into my hands by reasons unremembered. That book was Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone. You know the rest, like every other kid at the time I was absolutely enthralled with this fictitious world for basically the next decade. I would wait in painful anticipation for every new book and movie and be overwhelmed with joy when they were finally released, up until high school when that obsession toned down a considerable amount. At heart I still loved the series and when the final movie was released I felt differently than I did with the others. Instead of an obvious eagerness towards viewing it I had a vague sense of apprehension and reluctance. I waited a full week until I went to see it, and when I did I found it to be quite good but that’s not the point. It was one of the saddest...