Our Best of NYC 2017 poll has begun last week with the Garage/Slack Rock category and, after you-the-people cast your vote, we have the results to share with you!

Overall Poll winner (Jurors vote + Readers' vote): Baby Shakes

Readers' Poll Winner (Readers' Vote only): Stuyedeyed

We are superproud of these two NYC bands, that offer high octane garage rock inspired to completely different periods of the history of this genre. Stuyedeyed, with their insanely tense, obsessive tracks and screamed vocals, refer back to the proto-punk days of The Stooges, full of madness and debauchery - you can see them live at Alphaville on February 18th.

Baby Shakes, on the other hand, find inspiration in the melodic garage rock of NYC's own The Ramones, infusing ultra-fun surf and doo-wop elements in it. Baby Shakes will be playing W'Burg Hall of Music on February 14th and then embark on a Japan tour in March.  

Honorable mentions go to Navy Gangs (second in the overall chart) and Thick (third in the Reader's poll). The full list of nominees can be found under the streaming tracks.

Our friends at OhMyRockness know a thing or two about what band plays where in NYC, and every year in December they publish the list of the local artists that played the most shows in the past 12 month: it's the 'NYC's Hardest Working Bands of 2016' list. It must be noted that, since OMR's deals with "Indie Rock" live listings, you won't find any songwriters or DJs or funk bands in this list. It seems like all bands are guitar based too for some reason. Since we were in the mood, we created a Soundcloud playlist of these ten artists, check it out below!

Garage Land is a weekly series of local and international live rock 'n 'roll, garage, psyche and punk acts, curated and hosted by relatively new Greenpoint venue The Good Room, which was born on the ashes of Europa. The next showcase is this coming Wednesday (03.30), and features five noisy local bands, in the order listed below (from headliner to opener). In the picture, Dead Sexy Sheila.

We were bummed to learn that Sons of an Illustrious Father couldn't play tonight's Indie/Psych B.E.A.F. Stage at Muchmore's for a family emergency, but we found a last minute replacement in heavy psych rock quartet Stuyedeyed (pronounced: "sty•died"). Their hazy, bluesy psych rock will sure tip tonight's bill's balance even more towards the droney side of things. Check out their latest EP "Cursed," and our favorite track "Miscarry On" (streaming) from their debut album "BIRTH," released in January 2015.