Perhaps already distracted managing his existing billions, Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch passed up on instantaneously becoming the Big Fifth record label. When he bought MySpace.com, the magnate would have been wise to give himself first dibs on signing any band that posts its music on the social network. This would have allowed Murdoch to instantly enjoy the windfall of an increasing number of bands including UK quartet Arctic Monkeys, one of the groups that have used internet communities and blogging as a primary distribution network.

With consumers the world over increasingly more concerned with clicks than cliques when looking for music recommendations, bands such as the Arctic Monkeys have found their MP3 demos traded with a fervor not seen since spice originally filtered in from the Dutch East Indies. Arctic Monkeys' debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (Domino Records), is a refraction of post-punk-funk circa now, featuring mercury-tongued screeds delivered in bristly Yorkshire burr. They're the British band du jour, a Franz Libertines or an Oasis of Futureheads, if you will. But what's notable isn't their fearlessness about what's appropriate to appropriate, but how their conventions of connection extend past the hyperlinks to the everylad lyrics.

Barely twentysomething narratives of soused living—calling people out rather than lashing out—weave layers of sly observations atop angular clatter. It's the self-aware antithesis to emo's glossy, overwrought insecurities. Admittedly, the Sheffield group's musical late-'70s, early-'80s Britpop touchstones (a snotty storyline drawn through the Jam, Blur, and everything distilled by the Strokes) are not difficult to bandy about, and the band's dissatisfaction is easy enough to label as culturally insular.

And the danger of any hype is that it often derails logical progressions, triggering a 50/50 chance that a band will urgently stray from or intentionally stay with the sound that establishes the group's reputation. Still, the Monkeys could transcend if future material can make cocky, choppy rock and youthful confliction out to be more than a temporary MySpace phenomenon.