The Indie Rock Year End Poll Results are finally in!

Overall Poll Winner (Combined Juror + Reader Poll Votes): Big Thief

This indie rock quartet graced the cover of our winter 2017 issue of The Deli, and offers catchy and melancholic indie rock that sticks to the soul. They hone a fuzzy, distorted rock sound with folky overtones and production that cleans it up enough to be endlessly listenable. 

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Overall Poll 2nd Place: Cut Worms

Cut Worms offers 60s pop revival reminiscent of anything from The Beach Boys to Gerry and the Pacemakers. With catchy, simple, and relatable tunes that satisfyingly dabble in the retro, Cut Worms knows how to catch an ear. 

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Reader Poll Second Place: Baby Acid 

Baby Acid is self-described as "grunge-gaze" and it's easy to understand why on a first listen. They blend the fuzzier, harder, heavier elements of grunge with the the reverb-soaked, sound walls and atmospheres of shoegaze to create an entire sonic space. 

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Here's the list of all the finalists with their Readers' Poll scores. As always, we'd like to thank all of our artists, jurors, and readers for participating in this year's polls.  Stay tuned and vote for all of our remaining genre polls! 

	Active Bird Community		1%	14 votes
	ArthurMoon		1%	21 votes
	Baby Acid		46%	637 votes
	Big Thief		1%	16 votes
	Citris		0%	5 votes
	Cloud Becomes Your Head		0%	6 votes
	Cut Worms		0%	1 vote
	Deal Casino		0%	1 vote
	Haybaby		0%	11 votes
	New Tarot		0%	3 votes
	Not Blood Paint		0%	5 votes
	Paris Monster		6%	87 votes
	Patio		1%	19 votes
	Prima		2%	31 votes
	Public Access TV		0%	6 votes
	Rachel Angel		35%	481 votes
	Wall		0%	3 votes
	Zula		0%	13 votes

It must be said that Brooklyn slack rockers Active Bird Community - a band we've been covering since 2013, when they submitted their music for coverage through our digital submission page - belongs to the "Spotify 1 percent." Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with that, not at all! It just means that they have at least one song with over one million plays on everybody's least-favorite-but-unavoidable-music-streaming-platform-that-underpays-musicians. The guys actually have two songs above that numeric landmark, with "Pick Me Apart" ticking just above two millions! To impress our readers, we are streaming them both below, together with latest single 'Dead Legs' from their brand new album 'Stick Around' - trickle down sonics!!! Perhaps their popularity is due, at least in part, to the fact that these guys have been perfecting their sound since they were 11 years old - there's nothing like the bond and chemistry of friendship to keep a rock band united through the years! If you dig their '90s influenced sound, you may want to get tickets now for their show at Asbury Park's The Saint on February 23rd, before they sell out. - Jocelyn Huggler

Young Brooklyn-based rockers Active Bird Community capture the wearily resigned conversational style of early aughts pioneers The Strokes on recent single “QB Sneak” (streaming below).  The title’s casual football reference serves as metaphor on needing to break out from “two weeks of bad dreams,” and “feeling stuck behind the scenes.”  Avoiding heavy-handed studio enhancements, producer/engineer Christopher Daly allows the band to shine through in a Steve Albini less-is-more approach.  Channeling Julian Casablancas’ phrasing and tone the chugging rhythm and hooky riff guitar interplay wraps up in a tidy under two and a half minutes. Recorded at Salvation Recording in New Paltz with mastering by Jamal Ruhe at Newburgh’s West West Side Music, the full length album titled 'Stick Around' is set for release on 1/26.  You can catch them live this Tuesday 12/6 at Berlin NYC with Cosmonaut and Your Dog! and 1/26 at Shea Stadium with Bueno, Fits and PETITE LEAGUE for their record release show. - Dave Cromwell

Fresh out the time machine, Active Bird Community play indie rock music that could've been beamed straight out of the late 90's. Clearly inspired by the tense, guitar-driven acts of yore like Interpol or Built to Spill, the quartet's tunes are like love letters to a simpler time for indie-rock, when everyone knew what the hell it actually was. Their latest video for "Pick Me Apart" perfectly captures this ethos: Tom D'Augustino's slacking vocals sing about the mess that is life, while "fun" events and happy people whir around him. The only time he shows positive emotions, then, is when he's playing music with his friends under a blanket fort. It's a video about lost youth, highs and lows, alligned thematically with college rock, but featuring a more mature sound. Active Bird Community also released a single back in April, and you can check them out at The Bowery Electric on July 23rd. — Henry Solotaroff-Webber

Active Bird Community has the sound of a band that might hit you over the head if you mistakenly get too close to them. But their music is so inviting, you might end up in dangerous proximity for one of their electricity driven explosions. A word of advice: don't let their softer tracks like 'Eidolon''s crashing waves fool you (smooth as the song may sound), or the anthemic rise of latest track 'Mooncalf.' This is the calm before the storm of 'Astrophobia' or the relentless charge of 'Open Up.' This quartet does indeed mean business. I recommend listening to as much of this impossibly catchy band as possible, and with any luck... perhaps we'll get a full-length release out of them soon. Mike Levine (@Goldnuggets)

Full results of the Best of NYC for Emerging Artists ALT ROCK Open Submissions are here.

We added this song to The Deli's playlist of Best Alt Rock songs by emerging NYC artists - check it out!