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In 2003 in New York City.
Sounds like: A lovely sample platter of mopey rock sounds from the '80s, '90s and aughts flipped over and then rubbed into the carpet.
For fans of: Bauhaus, My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails, Swervedriver, the Rapture, the Twilight Sad.
Latest release: The explosive and uncharacteristically poppy Worship, out in the U.K. this week and in the U.S. later this month.
Why you care: Because everyone's a little goth, A Place to Bury Strangers plays music that's heavily indebted to dark innovators like Bauhaus and Joy Division while also increasingly interested in reinforcing its own shoegazy wall of sound. Where the Brooklyn trio's 2007 self-titled debut sounded almost like a tribute album to the aforementioned gothfathers and the Jesus and Mary Chain, 2009's Exploding Head had its own twisted sense of melody. Worship is filled with pop hooks, and features sonic allusions to surf rock, of all things. There's still plenty of gloom here, but those bursts of sunlight peeking through the clouds make this band infinitely more listenable than its more derivative early works would have suggested. We're burying strangers at the beach now, apparently—not in some Transylvanian swamp.
SEE IT: A Place to Bury Strangers plays Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., on Sunday, June 10, with This Will Destroy You. 9 pm. $12. 21+.
WWeek 2015