Referring to the old John Waters adage asserting entertainment is inseparable from bad taste, few bands exercise that sentiment to the degree of Ssion. Ssion (pronounced “shun”) is a ten-years-strong art-punk dance/design/film collective from Kansas City, Missouri, headed by Cody Critcheloe.

Ssion has gained notoriety not only for their gay-disco-meets-punk-rock musical stylings, but for their outrageous stage shows and videos, which incorporate a harem of dancers and backup singers, comically cheap home-made props, supersized video projections, over-the-top costumes and make-up, and a visual sense of wonder recalling something between twisted humor of Pee Wee’s Playhouse and Madonna’s Blond Ambition.

Called a “no-budget Fischerspooner by way of Hee Haw” by the Chicago Reader, Ssion have toured with the likes of Liars, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, CSS, Tilly and The Wall and Numbers. Some of Ssion’s high-profile proponents include, Ed Droste from Grizzly Bear, Johnny Jewel (Glass Candy), and the aforementioned Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who have tapped Critcheloe’s graphic design talents for their releases. Pitchfork called Cody “likely to pluck used tampons from Karen O’s trashcan and lip-sync into them.” And later refered to him as “the corpse of electroclash…wrapped in dirty baby diapers and stuffed in a Dairy Queen dumpster.”

A departure from their previous ultra-distrorted B-52’s meets Pussy Galore sound, their latest release, “Fool’s Gold,” fuses new wave/synth-pop, glam, punk, classic hi-NRG rave, and Italo-disco to create a true sleaze-pop masterpiece: ten unstoppably catchy (and surprisingly witty) tracks alternating between raunchy dancefloor anthems and heartbreakingly sincere confessional pop.