Karmin: "Look at Me Now"

This video, a cover of a current Chris Brown song, was uploaded just over a week ago and already snagged more than three million views for its young performers. They were even on the Ellen DeGeneres Show earlier this week. Maybe it's because this is, like, way better than the original.

Karmin is composed of musicians Amy Heidemann and Nick Noonan, who met at Berklee College of Music in Boston. (And are now engaged! Adorable.) They released an original EP last year and have a series of covers on their YouTube page. Amy's got a poppy R&B thing going on, and Nick is apparently a trained trombonist (and keyboardist/back-up vocalist). Their stripped-down covers feature Amy's lovely voice in a bunch of contexts -- but none more impressive than this. She sounds like she could go toe-to-toe with Nicki Minaj the way she handles the rhymes of not only Chris Brown but also Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes, who both rapped on the original track.

As a sidenote, this is a true modern indie duo: They're promulgating their music in every way possible, from the increasingly archaic MySpace to YouTube to Facebook to Twitter to Last.fm to Amazon to iTunes to iLike to Reverb Nation. And after all that work it's a Chris Brown cover that's getting them attention. Figures.

If you're skeptical, just watch the first minute and a half. If your jaw doesn't drop along with the beat at 1:15, you may not have a soul. Enjoy.

"Look at Me Now," performed by Karmin.
Original on Chris Brown's "F.A.M.E." (2011).