Pitchfork

Float like a butterfly the Boy Least Likely To might like to box up; sting like Sonic Youth. Norwich, England's Bearsuit are a clamorous, madly swerving indie-pop sextet who earned high praise from the late John Peel, and on 2005's Cat Spectacular they successfully bounced between the Go! Team's overstuffed excess, Deerhoof's fizzy song fragments, and Bis' recorder-wielding glee. In other words, those zinesters from Los Campesinos! probably already love 'em. "Foxy Boxer", one of the highlights on the band's soon to be no longer UK-only latest album OH:IO, isn't a dramatic departure, just a further refinement on plenty that's unrefined. Start-stop drum patterns collide beneath buzzing guitars, multiple UFO synths, crunching bass, handclaps, and boy-girl vocals that can rise to screams before going as cool as a Long Blonde on the line "she's got hips like mahogany." In fact, for all the melee, singer Iain Ross sounds almost like Room on Fire-era Julian Stroke on the minor-key, synth-soaked pre-chorus, intoning expensively, "I don't know what's right/ I don't know what's wrong anymore." It's Lisa Horton and another female vocalist who deliver the knockout, though: "Don't understimate the power of a punch from a foxy boxer." Can't hunt-and-peck, seeing stars. (There's also a video for OH:IO's "More Soul Than a Wigan Casino.")

MP3:> Bearsuit: "Foxy Boxer"
[from OH:IO; out now in the UK on Fantastic Plastic and due in the U.S. 03/25/08 on Happy Happy Birthday to Me]