It may seem insanely premature but I've done one of these threads in early July every year for the past 4 years, and the result has always been fascinating, as well as fairly prescient at predicting what will be tipped come new band season. Or just quite good at throwing a whole heap of bands worth checking out into one mega-thread.

I guess the city-festival season (like Great Escape, Camden Crawl, dot-to-dot etc) and the small stages at the big festivals are often a fairly good indicator, so this thread sort of doubles as a list of must-see bands during festival season, which is handy.

Here are the four that I think might/could/should make the BBC Sound of 2012 list.

NEW LOOK
Somewhere between Bat for Lashes and TLC. There's quite a lot of dark-pop around but my monies on this lot stepping out of the purply shadows.
http://soundcloud.com/k7-records/new-look-the-ballad

HEY SHOLAY
I worked with the singer of this Sheffield-based band in a previous life and I wasn't quite prepared for what I would see when I saw them at Great Escape. It was somewhere mesmerising between prog-pop, Jeff Buckley and 'Forever'-era Charlatans.
http://soundcloud.com/heysholaycloud/the-bears-the-bees-and-no

STAY+
Chill-rave? Snark-wave? Sigh-fi? Whatever you wanna call it, the Manchester-based band-formerly-known-as-ChristianAIDS were ruddy great live when I caught one of their first shows (for DiS at the Great Escape). The stuff they've put online so far has been quite downbeat but the show had some clear signs they might be one of the few 'blog-bands' to cross-over for quite a while.
http://soundcloud.com/nme_radar/christian-aids-stay

FOE
She's already been remixed by Atari Teenage Riot and signed to a major label. And her debut lp of likely quite brash bitch-pop, which is a little more Kills than Uffie, and Polly than Gaga, is either gonna erupt into the stratosphere or be the start a career as some cult provocateur.
http://soundcloud.com/foe-mania

I have some other thoughts but I don't wanna hog the thread from the off. Over to you...