(This feature, a sequel to this piece, originally appeared on the Rhapsody Blog.)

In April 2008 I wrote a scabrous little piece for our blog called “The Return of Indie Rock: Lo-Fi Strikes Back!” It was your neighborhood curmudgeon moaning about how I find most modern indie rock groups to be overwhelmingly flaccid and neutered and tame. (BTW, can you be both flaccid and neutered?) In an effort not to come off like a total jerk, I also spotlighted 10 relatively new bands — from Times New Viking to Pissed Jeans to No Age — whom I thought possessed the traits that made me first fall in love with indie rock in the early 1990s: lo-fi weirdness, cracked savagery and heart-wrenching honesty. Sure, I dig the extreme stuff, but that’s what indie was all about back then. It was, unlike today, way too strange for the mainstream.

Looking back on my list nearly a year later I notice two things: 1) the neo-Amphetamine Reptile scum-rock revival that the music of Pissed Jeans and Violent Students promised never materialized, and 2) lo-fi and twee, markets Times New Viking all but monopolized back then, have now become the latest hipster trend. Bands like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Vivian Girls and Wavves dominate that thing called the blogosphere. This is a welcome development.

However, there’s now more work to be done. And this is where “The Return of Indie Rock: Lo-Fi Strikes Back Part II!” comes in. I’ve created a second list of 10 artists — five old-school icons, five newbies — for anyone who has heard enough Vivian Girls and now wants to dig deeper into the lo-fi/twee movement. There’s a lot to be heard, as you’ll soon find out. Enjoy!

Oh, and one other thing: my list goes old-new, old-new, old-new and so on. Just so you know…

Television Personalities
One could argue — and I have many, many times — that Television Personalities were the most important band of the post-punk era. By the time T.V.P. released their second album, 1982′s Mummy Your Not Watching Me, they had already laid the groundwork for twee, lo-fi, Brit pop, indie rock, jangle pop, shoegaze, Madchester and dream pop. I have a sneaking suspicion the Vaselines and the Raincoats are more popular with the new wave of retro-twee hipsters (thanks Kurt), but for my money Television Personalities are the superior band and the ultimate reason why all this music even exists.

Kurt Vile
In addition to a stack of now-hard-to-find CD-Rs, as well as his work with the excellent War on Drugs, Philly’s Kurt Vile has dropped two albums to date: Constant Hitmaker and the newly released God Is Saying This to You? This super-talented dude just might be some kind of genius manic depressive. The latter record, you see, spotlights Vile’s love for 2 A.M. bummer folk, while the former is, as Nick Lowe once said, pure pop for now people, especially the opening road-trip jammer “Freeway.” I recently hounded a friend into spinning Constant Hitmaker, and he flipped out, yapping something about the Warren Zevon of lo-fi. Personally, I think he could be the next Bill Fox.

Tiger Trap
This is where phrases like “uncanny resemblance” and “Is that your friggin’ doppelganger?” come in handy. Crank Tiger Trap’s self-titled album, released on K Records in 1993, and you’ll swear you’re listening to the Vivian Girls or the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Maybe it’s a bit more nervy and unrefined, but not by much. Twee is cool because it actually endorses such behavior. To sound like a bunch of teenagers shamelessly worshipping their heroes is what it’s all about. Television Personalities established this very aesthetic on their first record, when Dan Treacy’s guitar style was nothing more than playing one Pete Townshend windmill after another.

caUSE co-MOTION!
Of all the new-school twee bands walking the streets of New York these days, caUSE co-MOTION! feel the most authentic to me. I know the “A” word is some kind of evil rockist thing, but hear me out. Legends like the Vaselines and Tiger Trap possessed this charming and all-too-willful ignorance. They sounded as if they were about to stumble down a flight of stairs at any given moment. That was part of the fun of listening to them — to find out if they could make it to the end of the song without falling apart. Though a group like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart exudes the required simplicity, they are relatively refined and well-rehearsed. caUSE co-MOTION!, in contrast, are not, or at least they don’t sound it. The quartet dives into each song with silly abandon. It’s really quite thrilling. They also sound inspired by Swell Maps, and that’s always a good thing.

The Mice
So you want to know who influenced Guided by Voices and Superchunk? Look no further than the Mice, one of the 1980s’ great unsung heroes. Featuring the angst-ridden songwriting of Bill Fox (he’s one of them underground recluse types), this Cleveland trio was way ahead of the indie rock curve, fusing Who-inspired power pop, punk and jangly Byrds vibrations into an awesome lo-fi aesthetic. Scat Records (which released G.B.V.’s two best albums, Vampire On Titus and Bee Thousand) put out the Mice’s definitive anthology, For Almost Ever Scooter, back in the 1990s. If that toots your horn, Fox also released two solo collections of bedroom folk: Shelter from the Smoke and Transit Byzantium. Both are boss.

Sic Alps
Lo-fi contains two camps: cute ‘n’ cuddly and dark ‘n’ grubby. For all you Wiccans out there, we’re basically talking about a white-vs.-black-magic kind of thing. The Vivian Girls practice the former, while Sic Alps totally embody the latter. The duo’s damaged tunes creep through a murky desperation that’s way more Velvet Underground/Spacemen 3 than Modern Lovers/Vaselines. Most of the time they bury classic pop hooks in piles of steaming… distortion. But sometimes they ditch those sweet hooks altogether and simply zap the noggin with formless feedback. Along with Ty Segall, Sic Alps are the most sonically extreme band we’re going to be dealing with.

Black Tambourine
Most of what I wrote about Tiger Trap also applies to Black Tambourine, another short-lived band from the early 1990s whom the Vivian Girls and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart utterly worship. I like Black Tambourine better than Tiger Trap, however. Deeply influenced by the Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine, they weren’t afraid to slam their fans’ heads into a wall of searing fuzz. At the same time, singer Pam Berry possessed this super-cute voice — well, maybe it’s more of a distant chirp. In fact, she often sounded like a nymph forever floating above a black hole at the edge of the solar system. Members of Black Tambourine would go on to greater fame with Velocity Girl, but that group lacked its predecessor’s moody charm.

Ty Segall
Because this whole lo-fi/twee movement has been really taking off, I had a glut of bands to choose from when putting together this piece. I was originally leaning toward two bands: Sic Alps and Thee Oh Sees, both from the Bay Area. But then this Ty Segall album started climbing up my Hot Rotation Top 50. I don’t actually maintain a Hot Rotation, but you get the point. Segall, yet another San Franciscan, is a lot like his SoCal buddy Wavves: a one-man band obsessed with blown-out punk awesomeness. But where Wavves goes for more of a no-wave-No-Age freakery, Segall digs himself some classic garage-rock grease. This guy should front the Black Lips for an album. That would be sweet. BTW, the latest Lips album, 200 Million Thousand, boasts some great lo-fi pop.

The Clean
No look at the history of twee and lo-fi is worth its salt if it doesn’t bow before 1980s New Zealand. That exotic and distant land produced as many iconic indie pop bands as both Scotland and the American South, if not more. What I dig most about the Clean — who are still going strong, mind you — is the clever way they balance pop song craft and punk aggression. They are so incredibly tight and revved up, yet they have never felt the need to make ears bleed. Power is channeled into these perfectly structured compositions. The always-awesome Merge Records released a great anthology a few years back. That’s the place to start — if you’re asking me, of course.

Woods
I know very little about this outfit. They are, I believe, a duo from New York. They’ve put out a couple of really cool records on the tiny Woodsist label, which has, amazingly enough, released a slew of jams from some of lo-fi’s newest hot shots, including Wavves, Pink Reason, the Vivian Girls, Blank Dogs, Sic Alps, Psychedelic Horsesh*t, Kurt Vile and Crystal Stilts. Wow. Woods are the folkies of the lot, recording crusty acoustic pop tunes reminiscent of very early Sebadoh. Case in point: The group does a great job of penning lyrics that are both heartbroken and absurd, like: “Love takes time, and time is money/ Love takes lots and lots of money/ And I can’t eat when you’re around.” Woods are a bit too homemade and insular to earn recognition comparable to that of their labelmates, but in some respects they produce the most rewarding music.

P.S. Here are some honorable mentions: Crystal Stilts, The Softies, Titus Andronicus, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Fire Engines, Nodzzz, Swirlies, Blank Dogs, The Pastels, Thee Oh Sees, The Manhattan Love Suicides and Josef K.