The Paybacks - If I Fell
I totally fell in love with this group sometime in my sophomore or junior year of high school. This was difficult to do, because I'm pretty sure they weren't signed to a label at the time, and in those pre-myspace days I was relegated to tracking down only a handful of tracks on Kazaa, one at a time and over a period of a couple months.
Bear with me...

Listening to them now, years later, it's still amazing just how much they fucking rock. There's this full, relentless energy to their songs, which manage to be incredibly catchy in spite - or because of - that relentlessness. If I had to compare them to another band, one that's gotten more press, I'd mention The Exploding Hearts. Both bands are unabashedly Rock, though the Paybacks have more of a raw edge I think. And the Paybacks don't have a sadness-tinged sound, because they didn't die. They're still fucking rocking, promise.