Best Album of the Past 12 Months

After disbanding Iris, Seth Brody (five-foot-six), that cute, curly-haired little Jewish kid with the huge record collection hooked up with Jimmy Allen (six-foot-five), a fan of "the original phase-shifter, Karl-heinz Stockhausen." The result: fivesixsixfive, Fort Lauderdale's computer-bohemian, cut-and-paste, electro-indie-pop stars. Clever marketing strategies, including saturating the area with bumper stickers and lighters and passing out a promo photo of the pair as Styrofoam silhouettes, fivesixsixfive hit the scene running. Half of the 12 tracks on the band's self-titled debut sound like half-baked experiments revolving around synths, samplers, and drum machines; but the quirky pop songs that make up the rest make it the best local release all year. Marrying hip-hop beats to acoustic guitars and even glockenspiels, xylophone, and timpani, the album's should-be single, "Freeform," sports an innate catchiness thanks to playful boy-girl breathy vocals. The band's sole live performance turned into a charmingly chaotic blend of dinner theater, live jamming, and karaoke. Unfortunately, with Brody planning to follow his career track in stage design all the way to New York City, the future of fivesixsixfive, sadly, may stay short.