I’ve been excited about Brooklyn’s Nice Face since scanning the dearly-departing Bistro Distro a few months back and taking a chance on what I thought was a cool name. (Horrible, horrible habit— Not recommended.)

The result was the Thing in My Head 7”, a record that wound up becoming one of my favorite singles of last year. (Courteously put up for free download by the artist himself here.) Pretty much everyone who heard it compared it to Blank Dogs, and I can’t really blame them: Essentially anonymous artist, blown-out, feedback-driven fidelity, that early Factory Records sound, etc etc.

Follow NF’s output through a cassette-only release (Creatively titled Can I Fuck It? and again, free download.) and a track on that “Wild About Jenkem” compilation that I’m having a strangely hard time bringing myself to listen to, and you’ve now got a guy combining coldwave-style electronics with primitive garage pop and a loner/bedroom recording aesthetic. Neat.

Nice Face’s latest is a release with the consistently enjoyable HoZac to release the Exterminator single. It’s a really good single. Moving away from the muddy, synth-driven sound that got him all those Blank Dogs comparisons in the first place, these two songs are straight-up guitar pop with synthesizer flourishes and the layered, reverbed-beyond-recognition vocals that I guess NF is turning into a thing.

Production aside, these tunes show a command of regular-ass pop structure that would establish Nice Face as someone to keep an eye on if the New Music Journalism didn’t choose to name lackluster acts like WAVVES as vanguards of this sound.