Every since our readers voted YES, GIANTESS as "Best New Band" in this summer's 2009 Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll, those dudes have been en fuego. Next Passion Pit? Pshaw. They've just jumped on as the openers for LA ROUX's upcoming, sold-out US tour -- which kicks off here next weekend at the Paradise -- and are dropping remixes at a furious pace.

We attempted to make this happen back when MILEY CYRUS's backing band was half of Letters to Cleo, but Kay Hanley wouldn't take the bait. Better late than never. And now that Miley's band is 3/4 of American Hi-Fi, we've got STACY JONES -- Cyrus's current musical director, former Letters to Cleo and Veruca Salt drummer, and American Hi-Fi frontdude -- covering Miley's megahit "The Climb," in the green room at WFNX this morning.

Stacy Jones spent the first 15 years of his rock life, much of it in Boston, grinding out power-pop in the years before emo made it a staple of Top 40 radio. He got his start as the drummer in Letters to Cleo, left that band to join grunge-era stars Veruca Salt, then pulled a Dave Grohl and traded his kit for a guitar as the frontman of his own band, AMERICAN HI-FI, scoring a debut hit with their pop-metal homage “Flavor of the Weak.

Harvard-educated pop chimps CHESTER FRENCH have been getting their swag on by Twittering with hip-hop luminaries, touring with Blink-182, and (see above) playing "She Loves Everybody" for any radio station that'll have 'em. But we fear they're about to make a huge, ginormous mistake.

CF have announced that they'll pull a Beck post YouTube vids of themselves covering random Top 40 hits on the regular, and to kick things off they're polling fans to determine what the jumpoff is gonna be.