The track was called The Coward Cracked the Dawn. It began with the familiar drone of a harmonium but then, boom! I almost fell out of my chair. Shilpa Ray is the best lead singer I have heard in a long time. She growls. She snarls. She howls. She sings blues-drenched rock and roll the way it’s meant to be sung.

Not in a long time have I heard them sung like that. Actually, not since Janis Joplin, have I heard anything like her. Ray, I learnt later, grew up in a “ strict New Jersey Hindu household” where, among other things, western music was forbidden.

When she was 6, Ray and her sister had to start taking voice lessons in classical Indian music and played the harmonium as an accompaniment.

Like Ray and her band’s moniker, it was Attila the Stockbroker’s name that drew me in to give him a listen. Born in England as John Baine, Attila the Stockbroker, 52, is a poet, musician and songwriter but, more than that, is a die-hard punk musician who’s derisive about many things that have happened to contemporary music in the aftermath of punk and has witty, sharp-tongued takes on everything—from capitalism (he is overly influenced by The Clash’s socialist skew) to immigration (he’s pro-) and celebrities (he questions the concept of celebrity).

From what I gathered, Atilla has been a session bassist in punk bands during the seventies and now does gigs across Europe, singing as well as reading his poetry. An obscure artist but well worth checking out at his website.

If Shilpa Ray and Attila were two surprise discoveries, there was a third, Klaus Nomi, a countertenor with so astounding a vocal range that it can seem unbelievable that one man is singing notes that span so wide a spectrum.

I heard Nomi’s Total Eclipse on a podcast and later watched the video on YouTube to realise that not only was he great singer who amazingly interpreted opera in a rock and disco style but also a theatrical performer who used heavy Kabuki-influenced make-up and costumes at his dramatic shows.

It was a pretty late ‘discovery’ for me. Nomi, a German who moved to New York, died at 39 back in 1983, one of the first celebrity AIDS-related deaths. There are a few records of Nomi that are around, 1982’s eponymous Klaus Nomi being one of them. And, of course, the Internet where nearly 60 videos abound.

Besides Total Eclipse, there’s an interview with the man who, I gathered, had a day job as a pastry chef in New York.

Sanjoy Narayan is Editor-in-chief of Hindustan Times