Viking's Choice: Cold Sweats, 'Hater Failure'

Verses are overrated. If your song has a chorus with a walloping right hook, why risk the wind-up? The New York noise-punk trio Cold Sweats spends very little time with a throbbing, Pixies-indebted bass line in "Hater Failure" before lunging into the festering cherry on top. A guitar blisters over a perversely happy-go-lucky beat (think "That Thing You Do," but a little evil), as drummer Alex Craver howls, "Well, it's not your fault / But I blame it all on you / Because I ain't nothin' but a hater." It's exactly the kind of disaffected hater-anthem hook that you'd want to hear over and over again — you know, before you go back to hating some more.

Social Coma comes out Nov. 6 on Six 3 Collective.