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'Welcome to the art-punk renaissance', declared Rolling Stone magazine last year, triumphantly heralding Crocodiles’ debut album. It was all just deserves for a San Diego duo who’d spent years kicking against the mundanity of their sprawling military town. As singer Brandon Welchez remembers it: 'My neighbourhood was just so boring that a lot of my friends started doing hard drugs at an early age. A lot of kids were growing up too fast, like, in a gross way…losing teeth. Plus my high school was full of racists and homophobes. Music was an escape from all that'.

Sharing both Brandon’s love for girl groups and punk, and his feeling of small-town-alienation, was guitarist Charles Rowell. Meeting at an anti-fascist rally when they were teenagers, the two have been in countless bands together since.

Last year the pair released their acclaimed debut album as Crocodiles. Alongside Rolling Stones support, "Summer Of Hate" also garnered them endless blog buzz and tours across the US and Europe supporting bands like Holy Fuck and The Horrors. Straddling vast sonic terrains from the jagged guitar stabs of street-strutting lead single "Neon Jesus", to throbbing kraut rock, expansive shoegaze and irresistibly danceable disco-punk jams, "Summer Of Hate" drew comparisons with The Velvets and Primal Scream.

Significantly, it also caught the ear of one James Ford - Simian Mobile Disco man and producer of Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons and Florence & The Machine amongst others. Together, all three headed into the desert in early 2010 to create "Summer Of Hate"’s psychedelic, hypnotic and anthemic follow-up. An album that would later be christened, somewhat fittingly: "Sleep Forever".

Raw it may be, but "Sleep Forever" is still an unmistakably more refined beast than its predecessor. Drums and organ whirls envelope you on tracks like "Mirrors" and "Sleep Forever", which nod to "Ladies And Gentlemen…" era Spiritualized as much as they do Neu! and The Velvet Underground.