Best local band

No One's Kind, a new winner in our readers' pick for best Boston band, hail (and wail) from Wakefield. Demo Derby champs for their release Newborn at the recent NEMO Music Conference, No One's Kind subscribe to the mind-numbing school of rock. And their dark, densely emotional lyrics ("Well I hate this place/I hate this feeling down/To you do I really exist?/Your hedonistic life and what's it done/I can't believe you don't resist as one") express hard-rocking angst. They've been sprouting from their garage-band roots, playing gigs at the Middle East, Axis, and other area clubs and bars with the likes of Alien Ant Farm, Dogfight, OMA, and All Parallels, among others.

Phoenix readers prove again that the rollicking and riotous Jamaica Plain-based Babaloo continue to reign as one of Boston's best bands. Babaloo get the biggest bragging rights for being the world's first and only punk-mambo/hardcore-juju band. And if that's a mouthful, try singing in seven different languages while incorporating a world's worth of bouncing beachfront rhythms. In their own words, they're "something like the Ramones meet King Sunny Ade meets the Sex Pistols meets Tito Puente." A dash of reggae, a pinch of samba, rumba, and bossa nova, and a sprinkling of ska, punk, parranda, and Puerto Rican dance hall create the Babaloo blend, surely one of Boston's best.