Top 10 Breakout Acts of 2009, Starring Girls

With the fun, frolickry, and hype-startin' of the 2009 CMJ Music Marathon already but a flickering memory, and the end of the year suddenly looming mere weeks away, it's time for list-making season.

And, with CMJ so fresh in the collective mind, I thought a great year-end list to dish up first would be the Top 10 Breakout Acts of 2009; those bands who, over the past year, came from nowhere to suddenly be, like, everywhere.

One of those bands has been Girls, a duo from San Francisco whose fondness for the simplest of names --their debut LP is called, simply, Album-- befits their back-to-basics approach.

They play rock'n'roll stripped down to unadorned melody, and do so with a surprising lack of snark: earnest, hopeful, flirtatiously silly. Sure, they're hipsters, but they're not hiding behind irony, nor are they preservationists out to sound like some lost Nuggets cut.

In the spirit of the band at hand, we can keep this simple: Girls are good. And, so are the other ten on this list...

Girls Gone Wild:
November 2: Hoboken, NJ - Maxwell's
November 3: Washington, DC - Black Cat
November 4: Philadelphia, PA - Kung Fu Necktie
November 6: New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom
November 7: Boston, MA - Great Scott
November 9: Montreal, Quebec - Il Motore
November 10: Toronto, Ontario - El Mocambo
November 12: Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle
November 13: Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle
November 14: Minneapolis, MN - 7th Street Entry
November 17: Seattle, WA - Nuemo's
November 18: Portland, OR - Doug Fir Lounge
November 20: San Francisco, CA - Swedish American Hall
November 21: San Francisco, CA - Bottom of the Hill
December 5: Los Angeles, CA - Troubadour