NRKTK
What: Manic rhymes about being twentysomething over a breakneck mix of rap and rock.
Sounds like: The Go! Team; the Beastie Boys.
Hangout: 16 Tons, a faux English pub that doubles as the city’s best stage for indie music (that’s just how things are in Moscow; don’t ask).
Sample lyric: “Cops have fun when you’re scared of ’em, you have fun when you’re not.”
MUJUICE
What: A laptop project by producer Roman Litvinov.
Sounds like: Junior Boys; eight-bit covers of the National’s High Violet.
Hangout: Solyanka, a restaurant-bar-club that serves as the main magnet for designers, D.J.’s, and pretty girls with ill-defined jobs.
Sample lyric: “We are blood on the dance floor.”
TESLA BOY
What: English-language synth-pop.
Sounds like: Cut Copy or Depeche Mode minus all the darkness and perversity.
Hangout: Strelka (see Red October map, here).
Sample lyric: “Sexy lady / Sexy lady / Sexy lady.” (These are, in fact, the only words to “Minsk-2.”)
Alexander Gorbachev, music critic, Afisha magazine