Blog: Listen Before You Buy

Los Angeles yacht-pop duo , Kisses , debuted in late 2010 with The Heart of The Nightlife , a collection of nine similarly tempered, danceable tunes. Kisses ’ low-stakes approach to indie-pop earned them some praise, calling attention to their quaint musical style. Now, three years later, Kisses sound more rounded-out due to stronger choruses and varied instrumentation, suggesting that the band is interested in pursuing trendy genres with grace. Kids in LA follows similar themes as [...]

With gorgeous, organic production and nods to R&B of the past and present, Marques Toliver's debut album, Land of CanAan , is a beautiful record that makes good on the promise of his first EP. Basing most of the music around his violin, Toliver creates an album that feels both intimate and expansive, making him an artist whose songwriting and virtuoso instrumentation has translated into a record that feels like you're listening to him and his cohorts play for you in a concert setting. Opener [...]

It's been more than four years since Scottish indie-rock band Franz Ferdinand released their last album Tonight: Franz Ferdinand , and after months of touring and playing new tracks on the road they've announced its follow-up. Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action will be released on August 27th via Domino (and a day earlier in the U.K.), and will come on CD, vinyl, double CD, double vinyl, and a limited-to-500 "Passport Edition" . [...]

It exhausts me more just to write up this post about another new Ty Segall album, than it does for the dude himself to write, record, and tour three fucking albums in one fucking year. Yeah, we're talking about you and 2012, Ty. Just take a break or something, catch up on sleep, feed squirrels, paint a fence, I don't know. I won't complain that you're constantly churning out fantastic music, but I worry about your health, bro. You good? Can I at least give you a hug or a back rub [...]

If it seems like the turnaround from Mount Kimbie announcing their new album to it actually being released is quick, you're damn right it is. At the end of March the London-based duo revealed that Cold Spring Fault Less Youth would see the light of day on May 28th (less than two weeks from now!) via Warp , and have already dropped a couple of tracks from it. Previously they released "Made To Stray" and "Blood And Form" , and now as [...]

In February of 2012, The Dodos ' member Christopher Reimer tragically passed away, and in the year that's followed the band have written and recorded a new album, influenced by their late guitarist. Carrier , which will be released on August 27th, will be released via Polyvinyl after the band left Frenchkiss , the label that they'd been with since their debut album Visiter in 2008. [...]

• The Dodos - Confidence

If you're having trouble waiting until June 4th to hear the highly-anticipated debut album from Disclosure , then we're here to help you get through the next three weeks alive. Today the brothers took to BBC Radio One's Maida Vale studios to perform a live session, which just so happened to include this brand new cut "F For You" , with the "F" standing for "Fool", just in case you were thinking it stood for Fibonacci (like I did). Settle [...]

R.E.M.'s major label debut, Green , was released on Election Day in 1988. It was a canny move from a political band, making their mark on the public consciousness on the very day the Reagan administration turned into the first Bush administration. The record also happened to be the band's entry into the big leagues, going from a small-town Southern band with a knack for jangle guitar and art-punk posturing into a world conquering behemoth that would become one of the most popular bands of the 902s. While the album itself is [...]

The cover art of  Wampire's   Curiosity  makes it clear the band doesn't take things too seriously. Posed in a warped vision of an 802s family portrait, Eric Phipps and Rocky Tinder give off the impression of two guys just wanting to have fun, sometimes at their own expense. While their giddy joy is apparent,  Curiosity  is also more than just friends goofing around. It's a fine debut from a band that revels in eccentricity, bringing to the masses an extension of their freewheeling live show that made [...]

As London Grammar slowly trickle out more and more new music to us, it's difficult to hold in excitement and anticipation for something else from the band, but today they've managed to stave off my yearning for another two weeks or so. Their first ever video, for the track "Wasting My Young Years" , is a jittery, black and white affair, beautifully lo-fi with statically-suspended humans in a dungeon. Don't act like that's not exactly how you imagined their first video to be. The single will be released on [...]

It's an album that I've been waiting approximately 57 years for, and on June 3rd my long, long wait will be over. Camera Obscura 's new album Desire Lines will finally be released. The Scottish quintet are following up their stellar 2009 album My Maudlin Career , and as we've previously heard on "Do It Again" , they're up to the task of bettering it. New track "Fifth In Line To The Throne" follows in [...]

Photography By Becky Rother Black Moth Super Rainbow and mashup wizards The Hood Internet don’t necessarily seem like they’d fit together, but Saturday’s show at the Metro proved otherwise as the diverse, nearly sold-out crowd danced together, first to a mashup of Kanye and Jay-Z with TNGHT , and followed by BMSR’s "Windshield Smasher" . Photography By Becky Rother [...]

With everything that's happened this week one could say that it's a bit of a waste of time to release new music this week. Not  MØ   though, she don't give no fucks. And rightfully so;  "Waste of Time"  is anything but. The track - her first since signing to Chess Club / RCA Victor - sees the Danish pop star pick up even more swagger than she'd previously demonstrated , which is nowhere near a bad thing. The beat is heavier than what we'd heard [...]

If being called the new Beatles is based on prolonged success as well as musical growth, it’s arguable that Vampire Weekend make for some strong candidates. With their last album, Contra , hitting #1 on the Billboard charts, the band cemented their position as one of indie rock’s most successful acts today – but Modern Vampires of the City shows that in spite of their commercial success, the band has matured significantly when it comes to their [...]

MS MR ’s first single, “ Hurricane ” admittedly stirred very little in me. The lustrous vocals of Lizzy Plapinger  swelled and echoed along to the "MR"-half of the New York twosome, Max Hershenow ’s slick production; its punchy drums and subtle horns crafted textured grooves against the fluid synthwork that flowed throughout. It was all very pretty and indeed worthy of the subsequent praise, but for a song that welcomed us to “the inner workings of [Plapinger’s] mind,” you’d have expected sparks to fly, pits of intrigue to fall into, and [...]

It may be folly for everyone's favourite grandad-rock outfit The National to put their new album out into the ether for streaming on the same day as Daft Punk drop theirs, but are you complaining? Of course you're not, you're just happy to be able to get your ears stuck into it. The band have officially released three tracks from the album so far in the last couple of months, with "Demons" , "Don't Swallow The Cap" [...]

One of the most anticipated albums of the decade is finally upon us. Daft Punk 's fourth album Random Access Memories can be listened to in full below, a week ahead of its official release on Columbia. They've been teasing it like nobodies business for the last couple of months and when we finally got to hear an entire track "Get Lucky" , the first new music from the French duo since 20052s [...]

It's not a coincidence that Chance the Rapper 's second mix tape, Acid Rap , starts with a song called "Good Ass Job." Chicago's hottest new rapper, born Chancellor Bennett, is a calculating presence, and a reference to the aborted title for what would become Kanye West ' s opus My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy serves as a sort of mission statement: Chance never really knew a hip-hop world without Yeezy, and so his music inhabits his hometown's most famous [...]

Performing under a variety of guises before finding a niche isn't the most unusual thing in the world. Perhaps the best example comes in the form of Lana Del Rey /Lizzie Grant: the mediocre nature of her earlier work didn't exactly halt her rise to fame. London’s Laura Welsh could be pigeonholed that way too, although she's opted to revert to her original name rather than lose it. Welsh previously went by "Laura and the Tears" and "Hey Laura"; going by the name choices alone, comparisons to [...]

• laurawelsh - Hollow Drum

It's been at least a couple of months since our sultry, beautiful, and exquisite LA friend Banks has released a new tune but she's rectifying that today with "Warm Water" . The single, produced by U.K. producer Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs , will be released on May 27th via Good Years . On "Before I Ever Met You" she lamented a relationship, both the good and bad parts of it for opening her eyes to the joys of love, but on "Warm [...]