Everything you read on the Internet is made up. Except for this: Black Kids make super pop music.

Hailing from Jacksonville, Florida (far from Cuba, close to Georgia), the Black Kids are the brother-sister duo of Reggie and Al Youngblood along with friends Dawn Watley, Owen Holmes and Kevin Snow. Unknown two years ago, they've become one of the most blogged about bands of 2008 largely on the strength of an album they released on MySpace.

With a half dozen songs that are catchier than a cold in kindergarden, the buzz about Black Kids has inspired big ups from Rolling Stone and the BBC as well as a deal with the same management team as The Arcade Fire and Bjork. It's a buzz well deserved: if you've ever shaken up a can of soda and then popped the top, you'll recognize the feeling they've captured on tracks like I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend and Look At Me.

But after the release of their label debut Partie Traumatic, the gushing praises turned to hisses as blogs pushed the line that the Black Kids had gotten too big, too fast for their own good.

As for the Black Kids, they've moved on. They're currently touring Europe and Japan.

See: myspace.com/blackkidsrock

(image by Nicholas Babaian via flickr)

Be the first kid on your block to drop some serious white boy knowledge. Who else can they turn to so they don't confuse the Black Kids with the Cool Kids?

Black Kids

Album: Partie Traumatic

Sounds like: The love child of The Killers and The Go! Team. And The Cure. A little.

Cool Kids

Album: The Bake Sale

Sounds like: Golden age rappers EPMD trapped in a giant bong listening to chopped & screwed hip hop.

Cut Copy

Album: In Ghost Colours

Sounds like: Synth-heavy new wave like New Order and Pet Shop Boys. But less gay. A little less gay.

Foals

Album: Antidotes

Sounds like: A new wave take on Battles. Or disco punk meets math rock. But sensitive.

Girl Talk

Album: Feed the Animals

Sounds like: Hundreds of rap and rock samples thrown into a blender. Served on the rocks.

Kidz In The Hall

Album: The In Crowd

Sounds like: The Clipse, if they worshipped Pete Rock and Kanye instead of Scarface.

MGMT

Album: Oracular Spectacular

Sounds like: Classic rock. Now with drum machines and synthesizers. And sass.

My Morning Jacket

Album: Evil Urges

Sounds like: A '70s country rock band frozen and then thawed out in 2008 to destroy dance rock.

Ratatat

Album: LP3

Sounds like: Music from a '90s video game re-recorded with guitars and synths.

Wale

Album: The Mixtape About Nothing

Sounds like: A laid-back Kanye West mixed with a brainy Lil Wayne.

• Lloyd "isn't your average R&B smoothie — he's much hornier," writes Rolling Stone. Billboard says the New Orleans R&B singer has "come a long way" on his new album, Lessons in Love, but The New York Times is disappointed: "Unlike its predecessor, which gave Lloyd’s tender alto room to breathe, much of the production here is gooey and distracting, too dense for Lloyd to make a dent in."
• Miley Cyrus sheds her Hannah Montana alter-ego on Breakout, an album that "finds the Disney Channel star returning to her factory setting of trying to please most of the people most of the time, without completely obscuring her own songwriting voice," according to The Boston Globe. "Though she's only 15, Miley's voice is rich and expressive as she dumps the same guy a dozen songs in a row," deadpans The Village Voice.
• Rage Against The Machine vocalist Zach De La Rocha teams up with ex-Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore to form One Day As A Lion. The duo's self-titled EP is a "five-tracker with bite, with venom; it’s a reminder that while de la Rocha might age like the rest of us, the fires in his belly haven’t come close to being doused by mundane revivals of his most famous group’s mosh-happy hits," gushes Drowned in Sound. Webzine Stereogum notes that it "falls squarely within the realm de la expectation: still that ratatating delivery, still those allusions to class struggles, politics, and religion, etc."
• Florida indie dance combo The Black Kids release their debut, Partie Traumatic, "the type of record that claims not even the Apocalypse can stop the party," according Slant magazine. "[T]eenage yearning couldn’t hope for a much better vehicle than their pouting power pop," proclaims The Phoenix. "Flanked by his sister and friends, Reggie Youngblood sings catchy tunes about dancing and desire with a yelp that suggests … the Cure's goth godfather Robert Smith," observes Spin magazine.