Kip Berman is the guitarist and lead vocalist for the 2007 Stereogum Band To Watch The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, which tips toward the jangly and noisy, sometimes shoegazer sounds of late ‘80s/early ‘90s indie. In 2009 the fuzz-pop project released a self-titled album and an EP titled Higher Than The Stars, both on the reemerging Slumberland label, following up on the self-titled 15-minute 2007 EP that earned them their first Stereogum mention.

Nick Thorburn first came to indie acclaim as one of the two principal songwriters of the Montreal-based indie pop outfit the Unicorns, most notable for their 2003 LP Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? By the next year the Unicorns had disbanded, but Nick’s stayed busy since with a number of projects (Reefer, Human Highway) but primarily Islands, who have three LPs to their name (2005’s Return To The Sea, 2008’s Arm’s Way, and the following year’s Vapours). The 29-year-old presently lives in Brooklyn and is working on an album with Honus Honus of Man Man.

Himanshu "Heems" Suri came on everyone's radar with “Combination Pizza Hut And Taco Bell," Das Racist's divisive first single (was it pointed social commentary on Food Inc. era capitalist/gustatory culture or a pointless earworm?). But in the time since Das Racist has established itself as a forcefully satirical and savvy wit-rap trio on the back of their debut mixtape Shut Up, Dude. They’ve beefed (and won) with the New Yorker, they’ve written eloquent articles on the state and health of hip hop, and straddle the line between indie enthusiasts and the legitimate rap community. And their pop-culturally embedded work is earning the attention of folks they namecheck in lyrics: The band will have their song “Ek Shaneesh” featured on an upcoming episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, prompting Himanshu to joke “I am going to start rapping about more people I want to work with.”

Main brain of the hailed synth-pop project Neon Indian, Alan Palomo is the 22 year old son of Mexican pop star Jorge Palomo. Neon Indian’s 2009 LP Psychic Chasms is viewed as a founding cornerstone of a genre journalists call “chillwave,” which Stereogum profiled extensively throughout the past 18 months. Born in Mexico, Alan recently moved from Texas to Brooklyn along with the rest of his band, and participated in the pilot episode of Stereogum’s EXPOSURE, pairing emerging artists with iconic ones for an on-camera exchange of ideas. (The iconic one was Peter Gabriel. If you need Cliff’s Notes on his life, please contact Scott Lapatine.) Alan is presently working on an album for his other project VEGA, which features most of the members of Neon Indian. His first band was the Austin-based Ghosthustler.

Patrick Borelli has been a downtown NYC comedic mainstay since 1999. He’s appeared on Late Night With Conan O’Brien (R.I.P.) and Premium Blend, and has a dance called The Candlepin Fetus (instructions for it are on his site, patrickborelli.com) which makes him uniquely qualified to be awesome at The ‘Gum Bowl.

Gabe Delahaye is the editor of our favorite site on the internet, Videogum.com. His first Gabe & Max video (“Internet Thing”), with fellow ‘Gum Bowler Max Silvestri, was named one of New York Magazines Best Things On The Internet that year, and has spawned regular web series for Details.com called “100 Seconds” (it lasts 100 seconds). He’s been featured on This American Life, the Onion’s podcast, and is regularly cited as one of the internet’s sharpest pop cultural critics.

22 year old Jemina Pearl was the lead singer of the short-lived, garage-punk outfit Be Your Own Pet. She’s been known to deck unruly dudes at shows who crash the stage, so give her wide berth while she’s bowling. After BYOP’s breakup in 2008, Jemina released her solo debut Break It Up in October of 2009 on Thurston Moore’s (Sonic Youth) Ecstatic Peace label, featuring cameos by her label head, Iggy Pop, and Dave Sitek.

Along with fellow ‘Gum Bowler Gabe Liedman, and formerly along with Jenny Slate (who now has her time monopolized by Saturday Night Live), Max Silvestri hosts the excellently curated weekly Williamsburg comedy show Big Terrific. Along with his standup skills, Max writes sharp columns for the A.V. Club and recaps of Top Chef for Eater.com, often finding his posts commented upon by the contestants themselves. He’s hosted comedy-oriented PopRally events at the Museum Of Modern Art, and performed the same duty for Stereogum’s first-annual Gummy Awards show in 2008. Indie rock loves him: Recently he conducted an on-camera interview with Ted Leo about anonymous internet assholes for Our Show With Elliot Aronow, and Ted Leo’s karaoke concert party a few months ago, and moderated a discussion between Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland, Zombieland) and David Bazan (ex-Pedro The Lion) for Radio Happy Hour.

At just 27, Norwegian crooner/heartthrob Sondre Lerche already has 6 albums and a great many EPs to his name, most recently the 2009 LP Heartbeat Radio. In addition, he composed the score for Steve Carrell’s Dan In Real Life film. It may have been the best thing about that film, though that isn’t saying much. Sondre relocated to Brooklyn from his native Norway a few years ago.

Often cited by the Huffington Post as one Twitter’s funniest Twitter-ers, Gabe Liedman is a standup comic who hosts the excellent weekly show Big Terrific in Williamsburg every Wednesday night. The show regularly features comics that go on to do great things, and many who have already done great things (Sarah Silverman, Aziz Ansari, Nick Offerman, etc.). Gabe has had a few successful one-man show at UCB, and contributes recaps of the show Glee to Videogum.com.

Baron Vaughn is a standup comic and frequent film actor – you can see him get shot in the opening scene of the blaxploitation sendup Black Dynamite, or partying in the loft with the Cloverfield kids before the monster snacks on the Manhattan skyline. The guy has a good voice, too, whether he’s using it to impersonate Bill Cosby, a Shakesperean actor, every walk of life on the NYC streets, or just to sing hip pop songs onstage.

In addition to being an incredibly busy session man – performing and recording with the likes of Yoko Ono, The National, Antony & The Johnsons, Rufus Wainwright, Grizzly Bear, and David Byrne – Thomas Bartlett records his own candle-lit hushed balladry under the moniker Doveman. He’s released three original albums – 2005’s The Acrobat, 2007’s With My Left Hand I Raise The Dead, and 2009’s The Conformist – along with a track-for-track recreation of the Footloose soundtrack. He covered it well, but then Stereogum’s aware of Doveman’s knack for covers: He took on “Airbag” on our free indie rock tribute to Radiohead’s OK Computer.

In October, Kumail Nanjiani was the subject of a front page profile in the New York Times art section, just the latest in a string of triumphs for the Pakistani-born, NYC-via-Chicago transplant. His autobiographical one-man show Unpronounceable put him on the map, and has since made a name for himself on the NYC standup circuit and occasionally mixing it up with John Mayer (he has a great story about a first-hand encounter with John Mayer’s accidental racism at a comedy show in the Lower East Side, which is not surprising but still totally surprising, and very funny). He’s most recently been seen on fellow ‘Gum Bowler Michael Showatler’s Comedy Central show Michael & Michael Have Issues. Since then he had a pilot green-lit by NBC, so he’s moving on to bigger, and better, and Los Angeles.

Over two albums (2007’s In Advance Of The Broken Arm and the following year’s This Is It And I Am It…), Marnie Stern’s stamped (and tapped) out an instantly recognizable, highly technical sound blending Eddie Van Halen-styled guitar shredding and post-Sleater-Kinney punk vibes. She was profiled in a 2007 New York Times piece profiling an influx of virtuosity in female-fronted guitar based indie rock and is a beam of sunshine. Her third album is due this year.

After releasing a string of albums on K Records as the Blow, Khaela Maricich teamed up with fellow Portland-based producer Jona Bechtolt for the project’s lauded 2006 electro-pop LP Paper Television, featuring breakout single (and commercial licensing gold) “Parentheses.” Bechtolt’s shifted his focus to his YACHT project (releasing last year’s excellent See Mystery Lights), while Khaela’s emerging from an extended hiatus with an intriguing new concept piece focusing on Lindsay Lohan. After taking the piece on the road to test the waters opening for Vampire Weekend, she’s moved to Brooklyn, working on an album and playing a series of workshop shows ironing out the narrative structure and musical sounds of her exploration of Lindsay’s career arc. It’s fascinating, bizarre, and great.

After graduating from Berkeley, Elizabeth Harper left the Bay Area for the West Village, where she spent time working on singer-songwriter oriented fare. Some time later she moved to Brooklyn and now spearheads the trio Class Actress, a new wave type project utilizing vintage analog synths, indebted to Depeche Mode and New Order. Harper released her debut EP on Terrible Records (the label owned and founded by Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor), frequently works with Chairlift, and contributes vocals to an on-going web video series called Girl Crisis, featuring many similarly situated Brooklyn-based chanteuses singing beloved covers (“Come As You Are,” “Smooth Operator,” “Wicked Game”) filmed on a Super 8 camera. She’s returning from a tour of Europe just in time for The ‘Gum Bowl.

Dawn Landes got her first Stereogum mention with her bluegrass cover of Peter Bjorn & John’s “Young Folks,” but the 28-year-old Kentucky-bred country-folk artist has been releasing music since 2002. Her songs frequently pop up on television shows (United States Of Tara, House M.D., Californication). Dawn lives in NYC and is married to alt-country musician Josh Ritter.

Larry’s an experimental, often character-based standup comic. He’s appeared in Late Night With Conan O’Brien (R.I.P.) sketches, voiced all the characters to the Adult Swim show Assy McGee, and can often be seen on fellow ‘Gum Bowler Jon Glaser’s Adult Swim show Delocated. He does a mean cabbie from Canarsie impression.

Jon Glaser’s an alt-comedy mainstay, having his greatest early success as a writer and on-screen character for Late Night With Conan O’Brien (R.I.P.). His Adult Swim show Delocated, about a man in the witness-protection program with a reality show, would make him much more recognizable if he and his family on the show weren’t always wearing ski-masks. He also fronts the band Detroit Octane, who wrote what should have been Barack Obama’s campaign theme song, “Barack Obama-sistible.” Look it up on metacafe, it’s pretty amazing-sistible.