(our friends at GSTV are eeverywhere, covering the most exciting new guiyar oriented music. They allowed us to publish this video off their website)
Like Vampire Weekend, Aberdeen, Maryland-based Ballyhoo! distill a variety of influences that include pop, punk, and reggae into a slick indie pop sound that’s easily digestible and seems ready-made for radio Identified by MTV’s Artist on the Verge Project as one of the “Top 100 Bands to Watch,” the band has already sold more than 10,000 copies of their two self-produced albums as well as over 200,000 digital downloads.
Ballyhoo! (the exclamation point is theirs, kind of like ‘Yahoo!’) has been around since 1995 and have toured like madmen for over a decade; earning a spot on the 2012 Vans Warped Tour and opening for acts like Dirty Heads, Slightly Stupid, and 311, whose drummer did mix work on their first album.
GSTV was on-hand for an exclusive impromptu performance by Ballyhoo! frontman Howi Spangler, backstage at NYC’s Gramercy Theater. Howi delivered on energized, unplugged rendition of “Take It Easy” for our camera and a small crowd of friends, bandmates and insiders. The song is off the band’s latest release Pineapple Grenade, which came out on June 25 and is available on iTunes.