The Republic Tigers

A crew of Digital Age composers, the Republic Tigers pass around song files like intraband demos, loading them onto ProTools rigs and sculpting massive creations from the initial song chunks. Starting with the hard elements of rock — guitar, drums, bass line, melody — the Kansas City band stacks vocal layers, atmospheric keyboards, sampled sounds, chimes, echoes, hums, whirs and whatever else feels good at the time. In creating their brilliant, crystalline pop hymns, the Tigers, who share this bill with Travis, blur the line between old-fashioned songwriting and computerized song-making. "The Nerve" — a track found on the band's debut, Keep Color, about a robot boy longing for a human girl — illustrates the concept perfectly.