Experimental music is daring, and this bold sister-act is no exception. Their music challenges your expectations of structure and tone without devolving into alienatingly shapeless noise like so many of their contemporaries. Instead, the unconventional nature of the songs draws you further in to Zambri’s world. Deftly blending vocal manipulation and masterful keyboarding, the duo creates a soundscape that is equal parts haunting and uplifting. Their ambitious live shows translate their sound perfectly, with an array of computers handling their effects in real-time as they cavort in front of psychedelic video displays. Everything about their work is imaginative and though-provoking, and you’re left feeling the band’s presence long after the music stops playing.

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The multi-talented rapper/producer/DJ/visual artist Spoek “Ghost” Mathambo (born Nthato Mokgata) has built a reputation in South African and Europe as being an avant-garde and intriguing artist, whose specialty is delivering club-friendly tracks that mix high-brow lyrical content with crunchy, grime-infused booty-shaking bass lines. Case in point is his current synth-driven single, Put Some Red On It, which he penned with his wife about the South African diamond market – just a lighthearted topic for the girls to get low to, right? Somehow Mathambo is able to pull it off. Recently signed to Seattle’s Sub Pop records, Mathambo plans to expand his reputation stateside, and is releasing his second full-length album, Father Creeper, in March 2012.

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Jonti is the only South African/Australian multi-instrumentalist on LA’s independent hip hop label Stone’s Throw. And even if he wasn’t, he’d probably still be the best one. Jonti pulls apart sounds like a starving kid on a road trip pulls apart an old cinnamon roll he finds in the backseat. And Jonti puts those sounds back together in an overtly artistic way – bells, guitar, telephone-y ringing, sloshing water, electronicized ice cream truck-esque bleeps and boops, combine with “aahhs” and “oohs” that harken back to the sunshiney pop of the late 60s. I can only imagine the young Jonti spending hours on his music, intricately sewing sounds to one another until the sun goes down and his whole day has disappeared.

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Indie-electronic pop bands have a narrow field to work in; if they drift too far into the pop spectrum they’ll sound like Owl City, but if they go too far into the ambient world they’ll sound like a Brian Eno tribute group - they need to find that happy medium between pop sound and ambient noise. The Postal Service did it well and so does M83; another band to add to this cannon is the Los Angeles group Letting Up Despite Great Faults.

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Amanda Warner, a.ka. MNDR sings songs that are so catchy, you’ ll never know you’ re listening to the byproduct of a woman so obsessed with the mechanics of experimental club music, that she has been known to attribute human characteristics her sizable collection of synthesizers. It’ s deep stuff coming from a singer whose brand of emotive electro allows listeners to forego any heavy mental lifting as you find yourself dancing to the easy rhythm of her sweet and squeaky voice bouncing off producer, Peter Wade’s tech-infused beats.

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Do you hold your electronic music to high standards? If so, you should be listening to Geographer. Are you only happy when you’re listening to haunting beats and driving synth-chords? Then Geographer is definitely your bag. Is melody as important to you as rhythm? You guessed it: Geographer. They manage the rare feat of making music that is catchy without relying on earworm hooks to hold you hostage until you’ve formed a Stockholm Syndrome-esque attachment. These aren’t songs that get stuck in your head; they are invited guests that you gratefully allow to become part of you.

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For folks who like a dash of mystery in their electronica, Fol Chen fits the bill. Reluctant to disclose their true identities and apparently residents of their very own planet, they have developed a reputation as a mysterious masked collective who make catchy, albeit sometimes eclectic and dark, pop-laced gems.

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A romantic intimacy floats in and out of Color Your Life, the latest EP from this NY quintet. Lead singer Andrea Estella consistently puts her best foot forward, as her gorgeously breathy vocals compliment the frequently relaxed, though rarely timid, melodies to atmospheric perfection.

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The Bay Area sextet is living in the past, present, and future simultaneously. Using traditional instruments—drums, analog synths, horns—along with laptops and electronics, the motley crew has managed to create a world of sound that embraces the psychedelic and Krautrock past while embracing the technological future.

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Combining beautiful, dreamlike vocals over seductive beats and all the right electronic touches, upstate New York's Phantogram is a duo on the verge of break-out success. Calling themselves a "street beat, psyche pop" band, they have captured the sound of city life, and they didn't even have to live there to do it.

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