Yubisaki Nohaku -- Nanigashi （なにがし）

One of the best (and most beautiful) (and most badass!) all-female bands in the world who play passionate, quirky prog-rock. Fans of Tricot are sure to fall in love.

This was the quotation describing this band Yubisaki Nohaku（指先ノハク）in the May edition of "Bento Box", the local free magazine on Japanese restaurants (and other aspects of Japanese culture) in Toronto. Once a year, a page is set aside to focus on Next Music from Tokyo (NMFT) which is a tour spearheaded by Steven Tanaka (also from Toronto), a great lover of the underground music scene in Japan. In fact, he has been so passionate about it that he launched a cross-Canada tour introducing some of the more interesting underground bands 10 years ago.

Yubisaki Nohaku was one of the bands that joined the tour this year (May 19-24), and it started its life almost a decade back, initially under the name of Raditz in 2008 before the name change three years later. The four members of the band are vocalist Kana Shimizu（清水加奈）, guitarist Junko Kimura（木村順子）, bassist Ikuko Miyakoshi（宮腰侑子）and drummer Yumiko Takeuchi（竹内裕美子）.

I like their 4th single from February 2015, "Nanigashi" (Mr. So-and-so) that was created by Miyakoshi which seems to be a mild indictment on the lack of conversational clarity among friends. The music video actually makes that clear with the band members goofing it up in a beauty salon as two of them futilely attempt to describe what kind of hair style they want to their frustrated stylists. According to their profile, Yubisaki Nohaku are fans of Ringo Shiina（椎名林檎）and I think there is a bit of her feeling in "Nanigashi".

The single also made its way to Yubisaki Nohaku's 1st mini-album "Sakana"（肴...The Appetizer）which came out in August 2015. There's not a whole bunch of English-language information on the band although I found this webpage. As for Tanaka's work for NMFT, you can take a look here.