Put down your Hawthorne Heights CD and quit obsessing over your gauges and girl jeans. Screamo-metal bands such as Hawthorne Heights have dominated the music scene, and it is about time to see a new band that manages to create a refreshing and diverse sound even while singing about the unrefined aspects of life. And that doesn’t mean ballads devoted to your significant other breaking your heart.

Jonny Lives! is a New York City based band that has been influenced by such musical artists as The Rolling Stones, and inspired by great writers such as Walt Whitman. Jonny Dubowsky, leader of the band, said some of his biggest musical influences have been the Beatles and the Beach Boys as well.

Their first EP, “Get Steady,” smolders with rock intensity. NME magazine stated “on ‘Get Steady,’ Jonny Dubowsky manages to sound exactly like ‘Raw Power’-era Iggy Pop.”

“Breaking Down” is a soulful adaptation of indie-pop harmonies and is devoted to a production by Yoko Ono. In “The Village Voice,” writer Chuck Eddy described Jonny Lives! as, “Post Radiohead pop/rock with teaming guitars and airy vocals.”

After an impressive UK tour, Jonny Lives! is gaining a fan base in the U.S. Dubowsky said he believes a diverse fan base is due to the explosion of MySpace. “Three years ago there wasn’t such a huge community to talk about music,” he said. “MySpace has become this huge forum to talk about music. Fans in New York are talking to fans in London.”

And rightly they should be. Dubowsky attended New York University as a philosophy major and writes about what he sees on the streets of New York every night. He references the punk scenes of the 1960s and 70s as inspiration. Even if the indie rock album has more of a pop groove at times than punk, the ties to the musical motivation behind punk music are clearly evident.

Punk music always aims for a revolution, whether slandering the political scene, or in Jonny Lives! situation, a musical revolution to transform bland mainstream into mastered music about the intriguing aspects of life. Dubowsky said their music is about changing the attitudes of fans as well.

“The music is not about being complacent, but about striving for a change,” he said.

Dubowsky said he enjoys the idea of not being satisfied with the “status quo,” of one’s life.

Jonny Lives! is not here to spread a political message, start a mosh pit or sing about hormonal angst. They are mastering a varied sound while finding poetry in the streets of New York, on the road in the UK and mostly importantly life. Jonny does “live” and he is about to revolutionize the music scene.