Perfect Rx

Punk rock that's intricately crafted and intellectually adroit and draws from Van Morrison as much as it does the Ramones? Yup, it probably is pretty new to most teenagers. About as new as, say, glittery house music might be to a man who's been slogging it in the rock-and-roll trenches for the past fifteen years.

"There's one house song I heard on that commercial last week that was particularly good. It's that band, uh, Sonique," Leo says, wrapping his mouth awkwardly around the unfamiliar name. He then starts hissing out a techno drumbeat before stretching his already elastic falsetto into a comical approximation of the chorus from Sonique's club hit "It Feels So Good." "YOUR LOVE...IT KEEPS ME ALIVE!" he wails, his voice climbing and climbing until finally shattering against a disco ball somewhere up in the Van Allen Belt. "I swear, it was an actual song! I think what I do is closer to that than it is to a lot of indie-rock stuff.

"It feels weird to say that," he admits with a laugh, sounding hesitant, getting ready to backpedal. Not all epiphanies, after all, are ones you necessarily want to flaunt. "Maybe I'll get over it in a week or something. But right now, that's how I'm feeling."