A young Jay-Z came up with rhymes in his head in order to impress his friend, the Notorious B.I.G. Atlanta's Playboy Tre learned to do the same thing for a less playful reason: He didn't want to get fired.

Two years ago, something finally went right for the Heavy. After almost a decade of inexplicable U.K. indifference to their swaggering garage rock and sweaty R&B, the then-intermittently gigging quartet found an appreciative audience -- 5,000 miles from their tiny hometown of Noid, England -- when the band was invited to Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest festival.

Drinking on the patio of a Toronto bar, the Rural Alberta Advantage sit underneath a mural touting Big Rock Beer: "Alberta's Other Natural Resource." The irony of the ad is not lost on drummer Paul Banwatt, 28, multi-instrumentalist Amy Cole, 30, and singer-guitarist Nils Edenloff, 30.

Last summer, Hockey's vegetable-oil-powered van broke down in Denver. Nine days and three unsuccessful repair attempts later, they had to cancel the rest of their tour -- that's when things started looking up.

Many bands endure the galling process of getting grades from critics (A for "next Radiohead," D for "next Nickelback, if they practice harder"). Wye Oak is one of the few to be graded by actual professors.

For British electro-popster Ben Esser, nascent stardom -- releasing one of the year's most exciting debuts, packing 8,000 people into his recent Glastonbury gig -- is a mere stepping stone. "The only reason I got into music is to become a model -- and then an actor," he deadpans over lobster salad and a bottle of Malbec at a Mexican restaurant in Manhattan. "My true passion is daytime soaps.