Spirit Children

As LCD Soundsystem rides off into the mirror-balled sunset, a successor has been anointed: Holy Ghost!, the New York–based duo whose self-titled debut album is the indie-club record of the year. LCD’s James Murphy first encountered Holy Ghost! members Alex Frankel and Nick Millhiser (both 28) when he and his DFA Records partner, Tim Goldsworthy, produced their former hip-hop group, Automato, and the duo had just barely graduated from their “socialist, liberal, Jewish” high schools, as Frankel notes. The pair’s first LP merges the discotastic DFA sensibility with the indelible sounds of their childhoods. “We’re children of the ’80s via our parents’ music: Michael Jackson, Rolling Stones, Steely Dan, Talking Heads,” Millhiser says. “We’re attracted to pop that has this misguided idea of what the future would sound like.” To that end, Holy Ghost! asked Doobie Brothers icon Michael McDonald to sing on album highlight “Some Children.” Frankel admits, “My mother has the e-mail chain between me and Mr. McDonald framed on her wall.”