the last two years they got keane and 50 cent right, so they should know who they're talking about.
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1. The Bravery
New York electro-rock band The Bravery have come top of the BBC News website's poll of music critics, DJs and schedulers to find the next big things - following past winners Keane and 50 Cent.
It is not hard to see why The Bravery have hit all the right buttons for a music industry crying out for excitement, edginess and talent.
Before the music starts, the eyeliner gives away the fact this quintet are pitched between glam and goth, and the swagger is of a band who know how good they are.
The haircuts seem to be borrowed from The Smiths circa 1984, while the leather jackets indicate their association with the recent Manhattan rock scene of The Strokes.
Their look gives a pretty accurate impression of the sounds that make up The Bravery's music.
Singer Sam Endicott has a dark-edged voice full of glory and despair that is offset by the pulsating, uplifting keyboards of best friend John Conway.
New wave guitars are sandwiched in between and together, the ingredients make up infectious and energising songs like debut release Unconditional and forthcoming single Honest Mistake.
The whole package made them the subject of a fierce record company bidding war in the summer, two years after Endicott set his sights on rock 'n' roll stardom.
"Anyone that says they don't want a zillion screaming fans is a jackass, a liar," he says.
"What is more fun than that? Nothing.
"We're just starting to play places where we get a taste of that."
It all started on a beach on Italy's stunning Amalfi Coast, when Endicott - like many others his age - was wondering what the hell he would with his life.
He was a jobbing bass player with different New York bands, all of which were going nowhere, while his city and country were waiting for another disaster.
Endicott had become fed up with the sense of uncertainty and apathy among a generation that seemed to be drifting along with little direction, as well as America's national sense of fear.
On that beach, he looked around, thought "the world isn't such a bad place" and told himself: "Are you going to do anything with your life or just be a bum?"
It was at that moment that he decided to bury his self-doubt and try his luck with his own band. "It's about forcing myself not to give into myself," he says.
Which is where the name The Bravery comes in.
"That's what this band is about - standing tall and not being afraid."
'Complete loner'
Endicott had never been a frontman or written songs before, but decided to have blind faith in his own abilities and took a gamble that he would be proved right.
His youth was spent as a "complete loner".
"I was never part of any scene," he says of his school days.
"I was definitely not part of the popular kids and I wasn't any good at sports. Even the rejects had a scene and I wasn't part of that either."
That made him feel he did not have to conform to any trends, he says, but also made him very distrustful of others.
"I don't even trust myself, but I mistrust myself less than I mistrust other people."
'Classic songwriting'
Which may explain why The Bravery do everything themselves - from recording the album in an apartment to making their own videos and artwork.
He says their main influences come from post-hardcore US 1990s bands like Fugazi and Jawbox, "classic songwriting" like The Beatles and The Clash, plus New York's "electroclash" movement.
Despite comparisons to UK bands ranging from The Smiths to Duran Duran, he insists there is very little early 1980s British influence - even in the haircuts.
"I have to say that I know nothing about The Smiths. I know one song, the one that has the cat noise - that's the only single I know."
Pop problems
Now, Endicott has his sights on saving popular music, saying 99% of stuff on the radio or MTV is "like listening to an air conditioner".
Most good bands are only concerned with impressing their own clique, he says.
"They're so caught up in impressing the guys down the street, in their own scene.
"And then you wonder why popular music's so bad. If you've got a good band, get out there and let's hear it."
The Bravery plan to get out there as much as they can, recently playing their biggest gig yet, to 6,000 people with fellow New Yorkers Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
He says he was "kinda nervous" before going on stage - but when they started playing, heard a crowd roar for him for the first time.
"I'd like some more of that," he says.
2. Bloc Party
London guitar band Bloc Party, dubbed the "new Franz Ferdinand", have come second in the BBC News website's Sound of 2005 poll to find the most promising new acts.
Tips from more than 100 impartial writers, DJs and schedulers have been compiled into a list of artists to watch in the next 12 months. The winner and full top 10 will be named on Friday.
Bloc Party are not interested in getting to number one, according to singer Kele Okereke.
"I just want my expression to be as pure as it can," says the frontman who is hotly tipped to put the art back into chart.
Bloc Party have been together in various line-ups with various names for five years. Their ascent began in 2003 when the singer sent a demo tape to Franz Ferdinand - who invited them to play with them.
Now they have made a debut album, Silent Alarm, due in February, of driving, striving rock that combines British post-punk with the US alternative rock of The Pixies and Sonic Youth.
They tried to create "something that was big, something you could lose yourself in", Okereke says.
But the first song they recorded was called This Is Not A Competition - and Okereke still sticks by that motto.
"There isn't any point being competitive about anything - I think that's the wrong attitude when you're in a creative position because I really want to express stuff and I'm not doing this to be number one," he says.
Trying to be commercially successful "really can negate your art", he says. "It's just about trying to express something in an honest way."
Drummer Matt Tong, the last piece of the Bloc Party puzzle to fall into place when he joined in 2003, agrees.
His aims for the band are to "try and be as relevant, creative and brave for as long as possible.
"And when that's no longer possible, to quit with our dignity intact. We've already achieved far more than we ever imagined," he says.
Bloc Party's agenda has already got them into the UK top 40 twice, reaching 26 with their last single, Helicopter, in November.
Their current progress may be partly down to the fact they changed their name from The Union in 2003 after encountering another band of the same name.
Bloc Party is a better name, Okereke says, and the change made the music industry take notice because people thought they were a new band - rather than one that had been plugging away for several years.
"Which is absurd because the music's the same," the singer says. "But I'm learning that's how the industry works."
Asked for his cultural heroes, Okereke says he respects Kate Bush, Bjork and Davids Bowie and Byrne - "artists that haven't ever compromised".
He also gets inspiration from films and books, namechecking writers Elizabeth Wurtzel and Hanif Kureishi because they "have put a human face on modern suffering and anxiety".
But they are not his heroes. "I think putting people on pedestals and revering them is foolish and lazy to be honest," Okereke says.
Tong adds: "We've never really believed in lionising cultural icons to the extent that their emulation makes inroads into individual expression.
"How many times did we see that happen during Britpop? Wear your own heart on your sleeve, not someone else's."
Bloc Party are clearly not an average brainless rock band in it for the drugs and groupies and their music and image have an underlying intellectual and egalitarian theme.
Asked what the band stand for, Tong says: "If we had to stand against anything, we'd probably want to stand united against complacency.
"Then again, it's all good me saying that, bright eyed and bushy-tailed at the start of our little journey.
"Try asking us again in 10 years time when we all look like Keith Richards and have fathered numerous illegitimate children across the globe."
Okereke puts "an inclusive approach to listening to music" down as the thing they would like to represent.
"I had so many friends at school that were very elitist and snobbish about their music tastes - it became about social rank rather than about celebrating the power of music," he says.
"I always hated that and wanted to make sure this band meant something to people from all walks of life, not just hipsters."
3. Kano
London rapper Kano has come third in the BBC News website's Sound of 2005 poll of influential music pundits to find the talent to watch in the coming year.
Tips from more than 100 critics and broadcasters have been compiled into a list of artists to watch in the next 12 months.
We are revealing one artist from the top five every day this week until Friday, when the winner and full top 10 will be announced.
Kane Robinson, better-known in the capital's garage clubs and on pirate radio stations as Kano, is hotly tipped to follow the likes of Dizzee Rascal and the So Solid Crew from the underground to the mainstream.
After working his way up the ranks of east London's garage world for four years, Kano, 19, has emerged as one of the most distinctive voices and most talented homegrown rappers yet.
London's garage scene, and its spin-off grime, may still be in their infancy compared to US hip-hop - but with a style true to his roots yet influenced by his idols from across the Atlantic, Kano could be one of the first to bridge the gap.
There was a glimpse of his potential in November when he appeared at the Smash Hits Poll Winners' Party - normally the domain of pure pop starlets rather than underground rappers - after coming second in a vote for viewers to choose their favourite new acts.
"It was a bit mad," says Kano, who had never heard of the Smash Hits Poll Winners' Party before appearing at it.
"It was a different kind of experience - a crowd I'd never played to, little kids, and parents and all of that. The song I was there with, it's not even a crossover tune, it's an underground tune."
He puts his unexpected success down to the video for his first single, Ps & Qs: "A lot more people see your video than would turn on the pirate radio, so it gets you out there to the wider audience. That's always good."
Kano grew up in a reggae-loving Jamaican family and a garage-loving area where rap battles were a part of normal playground rivalry.
He was a promising footballer, playing with Chelsea at 11 before joining Norwich, and his cousin, Jon Fortune, plays for Charlton.
But he did not pursue that career and he also turned down a place at university. "I'd done the school thing, I'd done the college thing, I'm not really a big fan of uni," he says.
Instead, he concentrated on making it to the top in the highly competitive arena of MCing, where the crowd is fickle and every new pretender wants to knock the star off his perch.
"To win fans on the underground is hard work," he says. "I wouldn't say it's something that's just happened - it takes time, and it's not like an accident or luck. It's skill and dedication.
"A lot of the time, the kids really decide - they have a favourite MC for one week and then they like someone else. It's changing all the time. I've had a lot of favourites come and go."
He has won over the fans, he says, with meaningful lyrics about real life - the "turbulent inner life of Britain's excluded urban underclass", as his press release puts it.
"To me, the lyrics are the most important thing," he says. "Sometimes it seems like a lot of people are not making sense or they're not trying hard enough or the lyrics sound a bit simple and basic."
That matters when lyrics are the only thing separating different MCs who are all rapping over the same beat on a pirate radio station. And most of his fans so far heard him on those illegal DIY broadcasters.
"The street fans were our first fans and they heard us on pirate radio so that's the most important thing for us," he says.
But the mainstream is now calling after he was signed to The Streets' label, 679. He now classes himself as "an artist" rather than just an MC because he makes the complete musical package as well as rapping.
Rap idols
When asked whose careers he admires, the first names out of his mouth are American rap superstars Jay-Z and Dr Dre - but they are followed by less familiar names from closer to home: "Ghetto, Demon, Kalashnikov."
Their very British urban styles will "one day" gain a foothold in the home of rap, the US, Kano says.
"You have to remember Jay-Z's had nine or 10 albums and Dr Dre's made about a million songs, and they're older than us. We're 19s and 20s and they're all 35s," he says.
"So we've got a long time but our time will come. Hip-hop's been going for ages and our music's kind of new. It's been going for a few years.
"So maybe 20 years down the line we can be at their stage. They might be another 20 years along the line as well..."
4. The Game
Los Angeles rapper The Game, the latest artist to be championed by hip-hop star Dr Dre, has come fourth in the BBC News website's Sound of 2005 poll to find the best new music talent.
Tips from more than 100 influential UK music critics and broadcasters have been compiled into a list of artists to watch in the next 12 months.
We are revealing one artist from the top five every day until Friday, when the winner and full top 10 will be named.
When rapping about life and death in the notorious 'hood of Compton, Los Angeles, it helps to know what you are talking about.
That makes The Game, aka Jayceon Taylor, well qualified to document drug deals, gang violence, family break-ups and poverty in the area known as the home of gangsta rap.
Taylor, 24, has been through a lot and, in the gangsta rap world where a hard life makes a good story, has drawn on his own experiences for his new album, The Documentary.
He was moved to a foster home after "family problems", dealt drugs, has had two brothers, a cousin and several friends killed in gang shootings and himself survived being shot five times in one night.
It was his own brush with death that made him look for an escape - and the world of rap, where the talented and lucky make millions and become superstars, was an appealing option.
Taylor's escape route came thanks to Dr Dre, rap legend and member of Taylor's idols NWA, whose Straight Outta Compton album was a landmark in 1989.
"I'm not telling anybody to sell drugs or pick up guns," Taylor has said. "When I sold drugs, it was because it was my last resort, because I had four sisters and an older brother and we were eating Cheerios on Thanksgiving.
"When I picked up a gun, it was because my life was threatened. I'm not glorifying the life I lived because I wouldn't wish that on anybody. I'm just one human being raised in the 'hood who wanted nothing more than to get out."
The Game got his name from his grandmother, who said he was game for anything when it came to sports.
He was a promising basketball player at school, but any notions of a career as a sportsman went out of the window when he was drawn into the gangs his brothers were involved in.
"I had a problem with authority growing up," he said. "I'd get an A on the math test, then run outside and steal a car."
When his brothers were killed, he got immersed in gang life and started dealing drugs. It was as a dealer that he was shot in the chest, arms and leg in 2001, leaving him in a coma.
While recovering, he turned to his hip-hop heroes and taught himself to rap, coming to the attention of Dr Dre the following year before being signed and groomed for the big time.
Taylor said rather than making him want to get into the violent world they depicted, NWA actually made him realise he could make something of himself.
He has described both Dre and former fellow NWA member Eazy-E - who died in 1995 - as being "like the father I never had" and has a tattoo of Eazy-E on his arm.
"We didn't even know our A-B-C but we knew N-W-A," Taylor said. "To me, Eazy-E was like Robin Hood, taking from the rich and giving to the poor."
Dr Dre has now produced much of The Documentary - while it also features the likes of 50 Cent, Kanye West and Nate Dogg. With names like that behind him, Taylor is set to become the latest gangsta made good.
5. Kaiser Chiefs
Leeds band Kaiser Chiefs, who want to lead a Britpop revival, have come fifth in the BBC News website's Sound of 2005 survey to find the best new music talent.
Tips from more than 100 influential music critics and broadcasters have been compiled into a list of artists to watch in the next 12 months.
We will reveal one artist from the top five every day this week until Friday, when the winner and full top 10 will be announced.
Singer Ricky Wilson takes issue with the suggestion Kaiser Chiefs are at the forefront of Britpop mark II.
"It's not mark II mate, it never stopped," he says. "We're just reviving it, we've got the electric shock things out and they're on the chest.
Wilson, 25, describes Britpop as "the best thing that happened in British music for the last 20 years".
"I was pretty young when that started off and it just gave me so much pride to be British and pride to be a music-lover."
The frontman says Kaiser Chiefs will merely be the next name on the list of great British songwriters from The Kinks to Blur via The Clash and Madness.
The UK's music scene has lost its way in recent years because bands are trying to copy American styles, he argues.
'Spooky pop'
"There's some great bands that have come out of America and Australia, but we don't have to rely on them to give us our music, to fill our charts.
"The British have always done it best - from Franz Ferdinand all the way back to The Beatles."
Kaiser Chiefs were born out of the ashes of Wilson's old band Parva who, he says, "were trying to fit in and be like an American garage band".
But he had an epiphany when he started writing about things closer to home.
Kaiser Chiefs' songs are about "life in Leeds and being British and young and hip", he says, describing their music as "British, quirky, sometimes spooky pop".
That formula got them to number 22 in the UK chart in November with single I Predict a Riot.
It was a punk-pop chronicle of Saturday night on the town with blokes who are "drunk, try and put their hand up a girl's skirt and have a fight at the end of the night".
Writing about everyday English life has not been in fashion since the days of Pulp and Blur. "I do love that kind of songwriting - getting under the skin of the British people," Wilson says.
Drummer Nick Hodgson comes up with ideas for songs before Wilson finishes the lyrics and the rest of the band develop the music.
'Number three'
"You could say he's the boss," Wilson says, reeling off a list of other acts with songwriting drummers.
"Slipknot, Genesis, erm, French Kicks.
"It's not weird that he plays the drums because when we're in practice, he acts very much like kind of a conductor. He can point at us with his big sticks."
Wilson says it would be his "ultimate dream" to have a number one album and a number three single.
Not a number one single? "No, that would be the death of a band like us.
"Coldplay got a number three, Franz Ferdinand got a number three, I think Keane got number three," he says, not entirely accurately.
"It's kind of the indie seal of approval."
Ambition
If his dream comes true, it would be a remarkable rise for a band whose first gig was in October 2003.
"When I looked at my itinerary for next year, my girlfriend wept," he says. "We are booked up pretty solid for a long time now.
"But it's going to be exciting and it's what I've been wanting to do since I was 10.
"So there's no point complaining now that I don't get a day off here and there. It's the best job in the world."
