Hot on the heels of Clap Yours Hands Say Yeah, The Spinto Band look set to be one of the hotter US indie bands of 2006. Like their Brooklyn counterparts, quirky and slightly off kilter are the words you’re most likely to hear in relation to Delaware’s finest. Quirky because The Spinto Band are full of typically surreal and off beat x-generation lyrics, taking in crushing skulls, hairlines, champagne and art. Owing a debt to Evan Dando and Crooked Rain-era Pavement, ‘Direct To Helmet’ is a chirpy, playful, almost eerie lullaby which builds to a crushing fall and which is coined with the sort of California melodies and precision instrumentation sure to make them The OC’s next favourites and the cult band of the year.