I dropped my luggage off in my nice big room and ran into the guys again in the elevator—their room was a few floors up. As the door closed, a voice said, “Going down,” and immediately the Fall Out Boy song “Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down” popped into my head. As if on cue, Jared started singing the chorus of that exact song.

“I heard that, too," I said, and he grinned at me.

“I thought of Aerosmith’s ‘Love In An Elevator,’” Kyle said.

“Also a good one,” Jared said, and belted out the lyrics.

Hector shook his head. “Not me. I heard that Nelly song ‘Country Grammar.’”

“What?” Kyle gaped at him. “I think we might have to kick you out of the band.”

“No kidding,” Jared said. “I’m not sure our relationship can survive such fundamental differences in musical taste.”

“Please, we all know you’d be lost without me,” Hector said.

“True.” Jared grabbed him, and they wrestled until the elevator door opened. I rolled my eyes. Guys.

The lobby was all smooth bamboo and stainless steel trim, and my shoes squeaked loudly as we walked across the shiny floors. Some of the people checking in or sitting on the couches were business people or tourists, but the rest had to be musicians on the show, with their dyed hair, faded band T-shirts, and guitar cases. Many of them were sizing us up, too.

“What do you think the other bands on Angel’s team are like?” I asked the guys.

Kyle shrugged. “Who knows? Last season she had all kinds of music.”

“Yeah, but she tends to go for harder stuff usually,” Jared said. “Punk, emo, heavy metal.”

“Last season she had one pop band that almost won though,” I said.

“True. I just hope she picks a good song for us to play in the battle.”

After the auditions, the next step was The Sound’s Battle of the Bands. Basically, the mentors paired off the six bands on their team and had them compete against each other by performing the same song. The mentors chose the winners and also got one rescue that they could use on any band eliminated from one of the other teams—leaving four bands on each team for the next show.

Usually there were two battle rounds, but this season had been shortened to only six weeks and moved to the summer instead of the spring, probably because ratings had been dropping steadily. Maybe they hoped a shorter season would keep everyone on the edge of their seats the entire time, or maybe they thought the show would have less competition in the summer since there was nothing else on TV.

We found the meeting room for Team Angel just as four guys with skinny jeans and identical shaggy haircuts walked over. They had that combo of nerd-meets-hipster down, and two of them even had black-rimmed glasses to complete the look.