Buzz-Band Generations Converge At Iron Blossom

People showed up to the festival in polka dots. The polka dots took many forms. Homemade T-shirts. Facemask hoodies. A pretty decent number of kids who painted themselves white and then added the black spots. Angine de Poitrine, the gimmicky and otherworldly Quebec math-rock duo who inspired those getups, have been virally famous for, what, a few months now? Their KEXP session, currently at 19 million views and counting, went online in February. Seven months later, grinning teenagers dress up as dalmatians at a rock festival. That's a steep trajectory. It says something. I wish I could figure out what.What is hype? I should know this by now. I have lived my entire adult life as a cog in the hype machine. I had a full-time job at Pitchfork Media Dot Com in 2009, OK? The eye of the hype storm. I should be an expert. I should ply my trade as a consultant, traveling the world to advise corporations on how to manufacture and channel the unpredictable tide of enthusiasm that continues to drive the music universe. The problem is that I don't understand hype at all. It's a mystery — an ephemeral force, directed by humans but operating independently of them. People try to generate hype via ...