Tarantella - Esqueletos CD (Alternative Tentacles)

Esqueletos is theme music for a surrealist carnival where the calliope plays all night long for an audience of inanimate objects. Picture a skeletal cowboy kicking an old tin can down the fairway and you've got the makings of a video. At first you might think Mazzy Star (and I also hear Adam Ant and the Feelies), but Siouxsie Sioux is clearly the chanteuse most absorbed into singer Kal Cahoone's repertoire. The band runs the gamut from sentimental waltzes to rocking alt country. Street cred dept.: features members of Slim Cessna's Auto Club and Blood Axis. (Margaret Griffis)