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Music

I Want My MTL: POP Montreal

Keep it local with these ten must-see Montreal act.

Remember how festival lineups tend to suck (via all the summer festivals)? Well, POP Montreal, a festival held in the fall, tends to do the opposite. It never features huge names—this year's bigger ones include David Byrne and Lil B. What it does a great job of, however, is giving spots to bands that are good and will be huge in the coming years. Grimes and Purity Ring played previous POPs to a handful of attendants, for example. POP Montreal is the one time a year when you actually go see the bands that play all throughout the year in small bars. The ones where your friend plays drums and you promise to go see but never do. If you're heading to this year's POP Montreal (which starts today), don't miss the following local acts:

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Mozart's Sister

She's coming out with an album soon and pretty much anyone in town will tell you she's the next big thing. If you talk to Caila,

you can tell that she's in the zone. And that zone happens to be the same zone Kate Bush was probably in at her zenith.

Alaclair Ensemble

Québec has a huge hip-hop scene. The only reason you don't hear about it is because it's in French. Alaclair Ensemble is one of the most awkward of the genre's exponent; they rap about being polite, cigarettes, and playing video games. Also, fuck Paris.

Agor

Agor is partly responsible for the rise of Arbutus Records and the legendary Lab Synthèse. At some point, he took up making his own music and played a couple of nights at the never ending rager of illegality that was the Torn Curtain. He spent some time in Berlin, which is where some people think he should've stayed. He's one half of Blue Hawaii and can play house so deep it could be called "Basement."

Agor - "Train"

Maica Mia

They will make you cry.

UN

This is probably the best cold-wave band out there right now. Listless dancing, tilting-back of the head, and a pinch of nihilism.

Grimes

Vogue, Dazed, Jimmy Fallon. Fuck that. When Grimes plays in town, she has to keep it real, because people here haven't forgotten about this:

Kuhrye-oo

Out of the dissolution of Born Gold (Gobble Gobble) came a lot of good things. One of the best ones is probably Kurhye-oo, with his electro throwback to UKG, dubstep circa 2006, and just general dance-rococo. Also, he played at the Boiler Room at some point.

Da Pink Noise

If BlackBox was still making music in 2012, they would call themselves Da Pink Noise.

Zoë Kiefl

Zoë is a multimedia-cyberarts major at Concordia. This means that she uses machines to make art. This native born Montrealer makes etheral Pop that you have to see being played live.

http://soundcloud.com/zoe-kiefl

Doldrums

Doldrums is a guy with a sampler who lives in places people refer to as "a space." He left Toronto because the city can't handle anything that won't bore you to death and now makes his bizarro-calypso-space-electro out of Montreal. Airick also has done production for the likes of Phèdre and Army Girls.

Doldrums - "Egypt"

@ggguillermo