New band of the Week: U.S. Girls (No 50)

Hometown: Toronto.

The lineup: Meg Remy (vocals, music).

The background: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? More pertinently, if an unknown musician toils in obscurity for several years, does her recorded output “count”? Well, sort of, but in a way, no. Basically, we’re asking you not to chastise us because, yes, Meg Remy, who is U.S. Girls, has been around for a while and so isn’t strictly “new”, but little is known about her over here. Anyway, that’s about to change since she just signed on the dotted line with 4AD. In terms of imminent critical regard, expect praise on a level with a Grimes or Tune-Yards, if not a St Vincent.

Her latest track, Damn That Valley, the first release from her debut 4AD album due out later this year, is said to be the logical extension of the music on 2013’s Free Advice Column, whose producer – Toronto beatmaker Onakabazien - is once again in charge of boundary-pushing sonics here. It is tantalising in the extreme, if you happen to like dub-pop that brings to mind the sobbing vocals of Ronnie Spector contrasting with the surreal skank of second-album Specials. The other tracks accompanying this piece are from 2012-13 and include: the blurred, smudged Motown of Overtime; the woozy Jack, which sounds like a glam girl group, all self-adoring vocals and stunned, stoned Bolan boogie; and North on 45, a warped wall-of-sound take on Plastic Ono Band’s 1970 team-up with Phil Spector.

But there is more to the Illinois native than spot-the-reference. The video to North on 45 – directed and filmed by Remy – shows a scantily-clad woman jogging at night, either backwards or forwards, toward the lights or away from them, anxiously or ecstatically. Musically, she has been described as “an avant-pop deconstructionist”, “a basement R&B diva” or “a cheerleader on quaaludes”. She has, to date, employed a combination of reel-to-reel players, tape decks and samplers to record, and release bleary-eyed late-night music for driving down haunted highways on a number of labels such as Siltbreeze, Kraak, FatCat and her own Calico Corp imprint. Even at its most lo-fi, the largely four-track recordings evince a keen pop ear, even if this is pop from a series of distant eras. In terms of playfulness, texture, adventure and attention to detail, she has been compared to Eno.

But there is another layer of intrigue. The name U.S. Girls isn’t just ironic in the way that its cheerleader connotations contrast wildly with the often waywardly woozy sonics; it also adopts the voice of a disaffected collective. Damn That Valley, its title taken from American author Sebastian Junger’s war memoir, comprises the inner monologue of a soldier’s war widow who can find no justification for her husband’s death. “That’s the valley that took my man from me,” Remy wails, her voice equal parts keening popstress and distress signal.

Pitchfork said: “Damn That Valley finds Remy surveying the scarred geopolitical landscape of the country she left behind, but instead of offering a broad critique, she presents an intimate, unsettling portrait of war’s physical and psychic toll on the average American.”

Elsewhere, she has been posited, via the everywoman perspective in her lyrics, as a female Springsteen. “This,” as someone wrote, “is music with something truly at stake.” She’s Sleater-Kinney with the pop sensibility of the Shangri-Las. How did we miss her?

The buzz: “You’re tempted to call them Lynchian, but [her songs] are singular and personal enough to warrant their own adjective. Remyesque?” – Pitchfork.

The truth: It’s the music that might come out of the radio if Ariel Pink was a female cabbie driving round LA’s seedier districts at night, in 1965 or 1972 (or both, at once).

Most likely to: Incite dancing in the street.

Least likely to: Cause a heatwave.

What to buy: Damn That Valley is released by 4AD.

File next to: Grimes, Tune-Yards, Holly Herndon, St Vincent.

Links: 4ad.com/artists/usgirls.

Ones to watch: Beau NYC, Nordic Giants, Samm Henshaw, Georgia Buchanan, ’77.