Auckland band makes the cut

Auckland power-punk quartet Cut Off Your Hands scored an invitation to play at New York’s “suffocatingly cool” CMJ Music Marathon, one of the US indie scene’s premiere events. Cut Off Your Hands was one of the bands to be selected from a pool of 4,000 applicants worldwide. “Coming from New Zealand there’s two major festivals that you want to be involved with as an up and comer,” said singer-songwriter Nick Johnston, referring to CMG and the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. Cut Off Your Hands recently signed with London label 679 Recordings, but is yet to snare an American distributor.