Mazel Tov! It’s A Band!

Congratulations, Mama and/or Papa! You just gave birth to a beautiful baby band! Pass around the cigars and clean the afterbirth off the floor of your garage. But before you cut the umbilical cord and plug an electric guitar into your baby band’s belly button, you need to name that little bugger first. Not only that, but you need to name it something current, so that your name is not only reflective of your band’s sound and personality, but characteristic of the times as well. Naming your band “The [Something]s” is tantamount to naming your newborn child Gertrude or Bernard—nobody will take them seriously, and they’ll probably end up with red hair or a peanut allergy. And if you use your own name instead of an awesome band name you came up with yourself, you’ve pretty much relegated yourself to albums with names like A Thousand Whispers or Horse Feelings and all the cover art features you standing on a beach while pensively looking out into the horizon. Don’t.

The template of choice these days is “The [Adjective] [Noun]s.” And for the same reason that there are so many boys being named Skyler and girls being named Kade, there’s also a few hot band names that are taking the music world by storm. Here are some of the most popular names rocking right now.

Royal Headache, Royal Baths, Royal Bangs, Royal Thunder

Shockingly, not a single one of these bands is a hose-sporting troupe of minstrels, or even does a punched-up version of "Greensleeves." All of them, however, are worthy of a King’s court. Try washing down their sounds with a goblet of fine mulled mead along with several limbs of broasted Turducken, because bands such as these deserve more than just turkey, duck, chicken, turduck, turken, or ducken. Hey, speaking of Kings…

King Tuff, King Krule

All hail. These goodly kings are right up there in my book with Wenceslas and Tut. If Tuff had been king during the French Revolution, I bet a bunch fewer heads would have been chopped off by Madame La Guillotine, because he would have let them eat Rock. And if Krule had been King of England during the American Revolution instead of George the Dick, we might still be speaking British and spelling color with a “u.”

Crystal Castles, Crystal Stilts

Much like the Crystalline Entity on Star Trek: The Next Generation, these Crystal bands are as beautiful as they are vicious, with intricate verses and sharp edges. When you listen to them, try to imagine smashing a bunch of Swarovski crystals—the really dumb ones shaped like swans or unicorns—in fast-motion with Crystal Castles and super-slo-mo with Crystal Stilts. Then walk across the broken shards, John-McClane-style.

Imaginary Cities, Capital Cities

I think they want you to listen to their music when you are in a city or something.

Panda Bear, Grizzly Bear, Bear Hands

If I were a salmon or a bamboo shoot or a pot of honey, I’d jump right into any of these bears’ mouths.

Beach House, Beach Fossils, Dirty Beaches

I think they want you to listen to their music when you are at the beach or something.

Dirty Beaches, Dirty Projectors

Hats off to Alex Zhang Hungtai of Dirty Beaches for getting on this list twice. His guitar actually sounds like he pours wet sand all over the frets though, so I’ll let it slide…right into my ears! Ain’t nothin’ all that dirty about the Dirty Projectors' projections, but I supposed Sanitized Projectors just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Wild Nothing, Cloud Nothings

I’m going to go ahead and assume that these are both homages to The Nothing that destroys Fanatasia in The Never Ending Story.

So, be a cool parent and name your band something hot ‘n’ trendy. If you think of any other common band names that we missed, leave them in the comments below and we’ll look at them and be like “Oh yeah, that.”

Okay, I gotta go, I’m heading to the Royal Crystal Beach Bear Kings concert with Skyler and Kade.

@theringadingkid