Hey there, kids. It’s time to strut our sartorial stuff and dive into fashion’s future with UI! Pull up a chair,  gaze into my custom-made Flashion Forward crystal ball and prepare to coquettishly zig and zag about the closets of UI’s fanciest, freshest new interviewees. Let’s examine the stylish physical and psychological baggage they pack their shizzle in.

The “indefinable” WHY? poses the question right up front so we don’t have to. Don’t you love folks who are clear about their inability to be clear right up front? I find it as bracingly refreshing as their recently released Eskimo Snow; a change of pace for the art-rappers, who, while never delivering bubble-gum poptastic status quo, could generally be counted on for a neatly packaged sweet n’ sour combo of banter and desolation.

It seems the boys of WHY? have become men: their fascinating but relentlessly inward-gazing musings on life and love (and how it affects them them them! Marcia Marcia Marcia!) have blossomed into full-blown explorations of the human psyche. And if you’re into that sort of thing, you’d be hard pressed to find an album that does it more succinctly and intelligently than Eskimo Snow.

Now, if we could only do something about that hair. I don’t know where I’d start, with their heads or their faces. Look! They’re as scared as we are. It’s possibly a reaction to how their dietary requirements were received while on tour in former Eastern Bloc states.  Don’t worry WHY? We still think you’re manly studs–even if you do eat salad.

Really!

Just because the fashion publishing world is imploding in Madison Avenue’s botoxed, chemically peeled and pinched little face, it doesn’t mean the rest of us need to abandon our sartorial explorations, right?

So toss aside the tree-killing Vogues and W’s and join us at UI as we us gaze into our custom-made Flashion Forward crystal ball and prepare to coquettishly zig and zag about the closets of our fave new interviewees and examine the physical and psychological baggage they pack their shizzle in.

Today we’re invading ElodieO’s elegantly appointed boudoir to check out her style file. This rigorously no-nonsense yet strangely whimsical (apparently these qualities aren’t mutually exclusive after all) French singer embodies all the much-ballyhooed qualities of a true Parisian artiste. She’s got an unabashed sophistication in manners of dress and comportment, an ability to look completely chic sans makeup, shampoo and a hairbrush and a fairy-like quality with sexual and even vaguely menacing undertones all without the bullshit, snobbery and a penchant for Gaulouise ciggies.

Hailed as a “sensually gifted songbird,” ElodieO churns out electro-pop that actually lives up to its name–there is some living, crackling quality to her music that her breathy intonations belie. And yes, tunes like “Stubborn” do in fact make you want to abandon your espresso and croissant for a moment to do a little spontaneous–and hopefully elegantly executed–French jig.

The truly grand thing about ElodieO is her grasp on reality, an atypical situation in the indie music world. Her clear-eyed ability to navigate the choppy waters between form and function as a musician is unparalleled. Go, Captain ElodieO, go.

Below, check out her almost disturbingly lucid grasp of what it takes to be a successful artist in the new millennium (she should really pen a “How to Not Sell Your Soul While Still Managing to Sell Records for Dummies” book, no?)

Let us gaze now into our custom Flashion Forward crystal ball and coquettishly zig and zag about the closets of UI’s fave new interviewees to examine the physical and psychological baggage they pack their shizzle in. Join me, won’t you? Today we’re invading Aimee Allen’s boudoir.

First things first: kick ass music aside, I absolutely love it when a lady–who could have become yet another corny helmet-hair talking head (oky, babbling incoherently talking head) on a horrifyingly craptastic TVGuide Channel show–decides to take the rougher, more shoddily paved (and paid) road to notoriety. Aka, indie rock.

When Aimee isn’t blowing up former beaus, disappointing friends or dispersing tragic life lessons with carefully aimed B52 bomb-worthy lyrics, she finds the time to churn out collections of “mostly acoustic tracks that sound tailor made for contemplation in the sunshine or sitting by a campfire.” But she hasn’t gone totally soft on us. In her latest effort, A Little Happiness, she still manages to issue forth some welcome sturm und drang, this time with a more “reflective” take on “less happy themes come up like heartbreak and organized religion.”

With all of Angelina Jolie’s seductive, tattooed, introspective charm, but sans the over-puffed peckers and almost tangibly sky-high and stomach-churning degree of self-regard, Aimee embodies the girl-crush inducing style of your coolest gal pals: whimsical, self confident, slightly zany, always fun.

And like the best of the BFFs, she’s not afraid to pass on a few life lessons without sounding like your mom with a roiling case of PMS. See her sage advice below regarding the sometimes surprising factoid that alcohol + talent + a microphone + an audience does not in fact = brilliant insights that your fanbase will want to go home and worshipfully contemplate.

Time to get down and stylishly dirty with UI as we Flashion Forward into unexplored regions of time and space: a magical aesthetic land through which we coquettishly zip about the closets of our fave new interviewees and explore their closets to examine the physical and psychological baggage they pack their shizzle in. We’ll also ask ourselves important, meta questions about, ya know, clothes ‘n shit. Let’s probe The xx’s bag of tricks to see what kind of goodies these bad boys and girls are hiding.

That they’re often described as writers of “bleakly minimal songs that are darkly romantic” makes them sound like the next bad one-hit wonder about to go into overplay on Pandora and The WB. But the overly simplistic–if apt–description belies the “singular bleakness” of their debut album, xx, “which sounds like it’s been made by moonlight by a grim team of introverts, half-drunk and lonely.”

And if The xx’s album, featuring tracks that “low together like one epic track with various movements” in a “mesmerizing” “unforgettable debut” that “can break your heart or renew your momentary faith in love” doesn’t hook you, maybe they themselves will.

They’re certainly not your typical young and winsome fashion plate band, but their all-black, strangely accoutered, excessively pale, come-as-you-are-and-be-prepared-to-scowl at the unfairness of it all teenage pose is actually refreshing and strangely innocent. It reminds me of less obsessively airbrushed days in which the music was center stage.

Don’t expect the crew to go all Kelly Clarkson on us anytime soon–they’re here for the long haul, and they’re gonna stick to their black and decidedly non-shiny guns. Below, check out their wiser-than-their-years take on the all-encompassing importance of experiencing the all-encompassing vibe of music fests.

I’ve zipped myself into a fancy silver time travel hatch through which I plan to Flashion Forward to new and unexplored regions where music and style meet: a land through which I will coquettishly zig and zag about the closets of UI’s fave new interviewees to examine the physical and psychological baggage they pack their shizzle in. Join me, won’t you?

Today, I’m orbiting into Heavy Trash’s dumpster. The rockabilly band is Jon Spencer and Matt Verta-Ray’s sweet love child; the boys churn out a bluesy blend of alterna-country, Americana and good ol’ garage punk. Heavy Trash may be coming to your neck of the woods soon to promote Midnight Soul Serenade, their new album, which aggressively furrows virgin ground musically.

Though Heavy Trash never shied away from the complexity that eludes many straight up blues/punk purveyors, Midnight Soul brings it up a decibel or five with “rousing,” “disorienting” songs that “carries enough ominous atmospherics under a squealing guitar line to sound like the opening number of a well-thumbed pulp fiction pot boiler turned into a musical.”

Heavy Trash is exactly like that beautiful old Victorian-era (I think) couch I snagged off Atlantic Avenue a few years ago in Brooklyn. At first glance, Heavy Trash is bombastic, over-the-top and brash (the couch is too–violently hued mauve stripes on gold lion-clawed legs and almost entirely covered in ruched velvet). But, like my couch, deep down, they’re classy classics. You just might need a little elbow grease and an appreciation for dusty old treasures that creak occasionally if you plan on bringing ‘em home and making them a part of your life.

They look rather Victorian too–with their pallid skin, jet black hair and moody bedroom eyes, I expect them to start galloping across wild moors screaming for Catherine, not brandishing superannuated gee-tars and hitting the stage to just, you know, scream.

As Heavy Trash explains below, it’s not even about where you are or where you going, it’s how you get there (and of course, looking appropriately soigné en route.

Wanna go for a ride? Let’s travel to unexplored regions where music and style meet: a land through which we can coquettishly zig and zag about the closets of UI’s fave new interviewees to examine the physical and psychological baggage they pack their shizzle in.

Today, we’re stopping by Port O’Brien’s neck of the woods to see what kind of sweet threads the folksy folks don while plying their gentle, strum-happy trade. Port O’Brien–a band that often resembles and sounds like something Andrew Loog Oldham dreamed up circa 1969 0ver a peace pipe–somehow manages to balance their clappy, singalong, acoustic elements and Northern California vibe with a distinctly modern sound.

Although they’ve only released two albums, Port O’Brien has shared the stage with Bright Eyes and Modest Mouse. Not bad for a bunch of hippies from Oakland that churn out “loose, rickety, communal sing-along[s].” But they’re so much more than one-dimensional bong-hitting folk-song recyclers who enjoy group hugs!

Port O’Brien sings about feel-good anarchy in songs like “Sour Milk/Salt Water:” “I don’t have a trust fund/ If the luck don’t come/ It could be a cold one/ All through the winter.” Plus, they look like Merry Prankster refugees teetering on the edge of settling down in a rambling four-story fixer-upper on the mean streets of Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Like most of us, they’re caught between two worlds–they just have the balls to wear it on their sleeves. Below, check out their musings about whether it would be better to be totally debt-free and maybe even–gasp!–rich (yuppie scum!) or whether it would be better to be a bird (freeeeeeeeeeeeee!)

Hop into my fancy space-time continuum zapper and zip ahead into unexplored regions where music and fashion meet: a magical aesthetic land through which we coquettishly zig and zag about the closets of UI’s fave new interviewees to examine the physical and psychological baggage they pack their shizzle in.

Today, we’re prowling around Wolfmother’s den to figure out where his wild things are.

An unabashedly old-school hard rock band from Sydney, Australia, Wolfmother–while not being particularly prolific (probably due in part to infighting) compared to their album-a-year musical cohorts–when the band does manage to release an album, it doesn’t disappoint. If “libidinous howl[s],” a “cranium-cracking bassline” and “sex-drenched vocals” are your thing, that is. And if they aren’t, maybe it’s time to switch to Lite Rock á la Sting anyway.

After splitting up and reconfiguring, Andrew Stockdale and new Co. are charging head-(or in their case, hair-) first with Egg–an album set to be released on October 26 that manages to evoke “Ozzy-with-his-balls-in-a-vice,” with “funky, Hendrix-y guitar.” And of course they crank out something “for the ladies…[a] ballad…an acoustic guitar [that] plays subdued harmonies.” Aw, thanks guys!

Wolfmother (who claim influences as disparate as Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Black Sabbath, Kyuss and Daft Punk) clearly value style as much as they do substance. Stockdale embodies Wolfmother’s musical mission with his Jimi Hendrix-cum-Kurt Cobain-cum-starving Calvin Klein model genetically freaky-deaky sizzling looks and his always-angsty gaze toward a seemingly ambiguous horizon that only he is deep and/or snazzy enough to see.

Deep thoughts, dreams of dark deeds, siren-drenched guitar lashes, screaming vocal crises…one would expect Wolfmother to have little time for the afore-alluded-to soft rock much derided by our fabulously talented (if somewhat tiresomely pedantic) generation of musicians who would never ever cop to listening to granny’s greatest hits.

But if Stockdale is comfortable enough to rock a ’do that could send weaker souls straight to the analyst’s couch (or at the very least, the oily arms of Frizz-Ease), he’s comfortable enough to cop to listening to (and liking) such golden oldies as “Dreamweaver.” His can’t be missed endorsement of “Gloria” below.