Despite their look and sound--which might place them in the remote hill country of West Virginia-- O'Death [ tickets ] hails from New York City. Their shtick is punkified old-timey music--they've somehow found the sweet spot between Bill Monroe and Black Flag, with some Tom Waits thrown in for further color.

It's a band that I wasn't overly familiar with going in--one track from a compilation album was all I had to go on--and it took a couple of songs for them to pull me in. But this band's charm and energy was eventually too much for even these jaded ears. These guys can play, too--guitar, banjo, drums, bass and fiddle played with a mad abandon, and downright psychotic vocals that made me think of "Deliverance."

Shirtless, copiously tattooed drummer David Rogers-Berry is an especially engaging character; though he was positioned behind his bandmates and usually barely visible to much of the crowd, he'd constantly pop up from his seat like a punk-rock Muppet before crashing back down to further abuse his wares.