Mika Miko

I was once a thirteen-year-old girl. No lie. It totally happened, and I can prove it by deciphering C.Y.S.L.A.B.F. -- the acronymic release from Los Angeles-based all-chick band Mika Miko. Any girl that survived middle school knows the basics of gossip: a slip of notebook paper exchanged between classes, scribbled with code names and acronyms to avoid scandal. And the signoff? C.Y.S.L.A.B.F. (That's C-Ya-Soon-Luv-Always-Best-Friends, for the uninitiated.) I'm on to you, Mika Miko. But the truth is that this five-piece would have been too cool for school. While the rest of us were tinkering away at choir and dodgeball, these ladies would have been learning guitar tricks from jamming out to Vice Squad and Reagan Youth records. Mika Miko is a punk band in the most headbanging and spirited sense of the word. The act doesn't need Mohawks or studded leather vests to play frenetic and charming three-chord rock. Mika Miko does it early-'80s Dischord style -- and O.M.G., that's so rad!