Yea Yeah

Brooklyn duo/couple Matt and Kim put on one of my favorite live shows this year, though it took another four months to figure out what they looked like. See, the show was at an apartment so crowded that I never saw them set up. Then I couldn't see over the crowd surfers, who were so close to the ceiling, they pushed off it with their sneakers. The police busted up the show before it ended-- the downstairs neighbors must have sensed a cave-in approaching.

This single from their proper debut contributed to that near disaster. "Yeah" can either be a dismissive or an excited utterance, and here it's the latter. Singer/keyboardist Matt shouts the 19 "yeah"s that make up the chorus, twisting each ever so slightly. "Forget your court date," he urges at the start, reminding you of the simple pleasures of juvenile delinquency. It works well with the song's simple one-two beat and keyboard line, but it also shows Matt and Kim's knack for shaping the simplest words and musical phrases into gut-punching, bail-skipping, ceiling-crashing joy.