Irony. I’m pretty sure that’s what these four Montreal men were going for when they named their collective musical being Suuns. “I killed a man when I was 11 years old/ But I’m innocent/ Yeah I’m innocent,” are the first words you hear on Zeroes EP. Singer/guitarist Ben Shemie calmly utters these contradicting statements of guilt and innocence in an alluring, melancholy purr, while bombastic drums, synth, and guitar create a prison of sound, incarcerating your thoughts. Zeroes EP starts stellar with this heavy opening track, “Disappearance Of The Skyscraper,” and keeps rolling with the same dark intensity.

Suuns’ sound is hard to hammer down. On “PVC (EP Version),” splashy drums paired with a simple, repetitive guitar riff give off the same modern white-boy funk feeling as LCD Soundsystem, just with less dancehall energy. Shemie’s lyrics stem from loneliness and its dark manifestations, striking a similar chord with Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor. “PVC sits on his own/ PVC sits in the cold just waiting for the bus like the day before,” Shemie sings of the dissatisfied modern man. Suuns use electronic instruments in place of heavily distorted guitars and speed-blur riffs to create a brand of heavy that furthers the NIN comparison and is reminiscent of electro-industrial rock. However, Shemie is in a state of perpetual cool, his vocals never strained or overly emotive. Suuns’ one undeniable quality is its heaviness. The break in “Nnnnnnn” is so heavy you’ll feel like you just took a roundhouse to the face from UFC fighter Georges St. Pierre. The expert musical texturing created by synth and drums is the origin of Suuns’ brilliance.

The best thing about Zeroes EP is that it’s available for free. You can download the six-song EP from Secretly Canadian’s website, and in this age of digitalization and the destruction of the music industry’s legacy business formula, you have to give props to a young band that gives away their music. These guys have balls. Suuns is currently working on full-length release. Be ready. By Alex Lemonde-Gray

Download Suuns’ Zeroes EP for free at http://secretlycanadian.com/suuns

Defiance, Ohio played a show at Ring Of Fire in St. Augustine, FL, on Wednesday, and I wasn’t there. But I needed to be there, along with everyone else who wasn’t and slightly wanted to be. We missed out on a chance to see spot-on poster children for the pulsing punk scene that will never die, never sell out, and never stop pushing to divide themselves from a cultivated mass. There is another side to punk this good. It is heart-driven, generous, and never ambivalent. Case in point, Defiance, Ohio casually mentions on their website that they donated proceeds from a recent Chicago benefit show to MESS, a medical and mental health relief effort in Haiti that has provided direct support to residents of earthquake-afflicted Jacmel. Attention to detail separates us all.

You can now listen to Defiance, Ohio’s Midwestern Minutes and hear the sounds that personify the van ride, the dive bar, and the striving grit that soaks into every pore of this album and into every intersection of the life-altering genre of punk and lo-fi composure. Midwestern Minutes is arguably equal to the symphonies and operas attended by the open-minded classes of the latter centuries. The only difference is that this is music accessible to everyone, not just the aristocracy. I imagine Ring Of Fire ran with a river of fluids from the crowd, like the bottom tier of troglodytes at a Shakespeare debut.

Honestly, I could make metaphorical comparisons about how stellar Defiance, Ohio’s new album is until my nose bleeds, but there are things people just know. And I know right now to shut up and simply state that this is an important album. One that will stand the van rides, the dive bars, the shitty sleeping arrangements, and, ultimately, the test of time. By Will Tunstall

How weird can hip-hop get? That seems to be the question Connecticut label Fake Four Inc. keeps asking, pushing the limits of so-called “indie rap” and “folk-hop” with each and every release. Label head Ceschi — who put out his own expansively dark album in June — urged fellow Canadians Gregory Pepper and producer Factor to collaborate electronically in 2009, and the result is Common Grackle, an oddly intriguing duo whose debut album The Great Depression is a puzzling joy.

First off, a “common grackle” is an East Coast bird (points scored there) known to mimic the noises of other birds and humans. But Common Grackle aren’t imitating anyone on The Great Depression; opening track “Thank God It’s Monday” sets the tone straight off, with Pepper’s breathy indie-pop vocal style somehow meshing perfectly with Factor’s jazzy, vaguely nostalgic beats. The song’s guest spot from weirdo kingpin Kool Keith makes no sense, but then neither does Pepper’s overdramatic exhortations about how “There’s a lot of ugly women at my favorite bar/ The sidewalk feels crowded and there’s kids in the park/ I’m just a little minnow/All these people are sharks.”

Off-kilter yes, but also catchy, much like the far-too-short mash-up “Churchill’s Black Dog” and the weeping title track, which tugged my heartstrings harder than any other rap song I’ve heard this year. And then any semblance of hip-hop proper disappears: “All The Pawns” boasts a shimmying ’80s pop riff and a hilariously ironic “I’ll never Twitter about it” chorus, “At The Grindcore Show” combines plodding pianos with a tender cacophony of voices, “Down With The Ship” is shambling symphonic pop at its best, and “Magic Beans” even tosses in some truly disorienting alt-country slide guitar. Common Grackle knows how to blend disparate trends better than anyone I’ve heard recently, while also possessing the ability to viciously skewer those same trends. If Pepper and Factor keep it up, they could find themselves steering the ship of alternative hip-hop into much more creative waters. By Nick McGregor

This is the shortest collection of music ever produced by a band. I think if you take pills, the songs will last longer, but you will also fall asleep. Otherwise, you have 11 minutes and eight seconds to make a decision about Dead Models. You’ll probably decide they were pretty nice or even quite good for the short time you listened. Really, the way their debut EP works is to take all of the things that make happy music happy and squash them all together. Things like soft vocals, plucky guitars, shabby beach grooves, and other cool shit like that.

Dead Models is also a really deep name. Most models die feeling pretty good, overdosing on something pleasurable. I know this could be argued, but really, when I think about model deaths, I think beautiful women splayed in satin sheets with extremely high thread counts finally escaping into eternity and away from the pressures of extreme beauty and constant critique from the eyes of the public.

There we go — that’s what’s going on in this album. It is a quick release for Brits Nathan Clarke and Paul Orwell. They brought in collaborator Mark Brown on bass and Nathan’s younger brother on drums and recorded an 11-minute escapade into the afterlife, where everyone wiggles like it’s the ‘50s and grooves with ‘60s London swagger. It’s a fast way to go, but well played and worth the 11-minute daydream. By Will Tunstall

Download Dead Models’ self-titled EP for free at http://deadmodels.playwhitenoise.com