Back in the 1980's, local band Velveteen signed to Atlantic Records and released an excellent EP, Afterhours. Today we would call it dance-rock, reliant on a steady drum machine backbeat, synth plus rock acruments.
Velveteen were Lisa Burns and Sal Maida and they are both still making music.
Lisa has a new song "Channelling"Mary" -a minimalist Lou Reed-y sing-speak, detailing her love of sound from the Shangrilas to the Stones to the Underground to David Bowie, all to a three chord undercoated acoustic guitar. It is a great step back in time.
In 2010 there was also a solo album, Unadorned, co-produced by her partner in crime Sal and it is pretty good, two excellent covers, and a clutch of fully realized lo-fi art-rock songs.
Same year (though I may have screwed this up somewhere) there is 3 Hours Of Creepy Halloween Sounds and Lisa has 8 songs of swampy, scary stuff, instrumental effects like the Cramps with the worlds killed here and sound effects clashing and clanking and going bang in the night there. You can get that one on Spotify, Unadorned you can stream on myspace, here's the link: http://www.myspace.com/lisabburns/music/#!/lisabburns/music
Finally, that "Channelling Mary" is really great and here is the youtube. Let's hope Lisa starts playing locally again soon.