Blog: AudioCred

Fresh off their stirring debut single "Wings," multi-cultural New York band Haerts- whose members hail from America, England, and Germany- make a bold impression with their latest, "All the Days." Hopefully, Haerts' debut full-length isn't too far away, because I could definitely get used to soaring, melodic anthems like these.

Surf City's "It's A Common Life" lives up to the quartet's moniker without sounding too common. There's a glistening, buzzing shimmer to the guitars, which soar around like seagulls over a surfer's paradise. This is summery bluster that's still appropriate for an overlong winter - bright and friendly but just dark enough to surprise.

This has got indie crush mixtape fodder all over it.  A little bit of twee, a little bit of surf rock, tons of hand claps.  The hook, "I wanna have a good time" has a bit of double meaning.  It's the kind of music you'd listen to cranked up with friends on a road trip with the windows down or alone in your room because you're the only one who wasn't invited on the road trip.  "Sunglasses"  is the second to last track off of Saturday Looks Good to Me's first album in 6 years,  One Kiss Ends It All.

OMG NEW BOARDS! So post-rock.

For a song with such morbid lyrics as, "satan, wake me in the morning", "kill me whenever you want to, I want you to" this song sure sounds bouncy and uplifting.  "Burn A Church" is a lively psych pop tune with warbly vocals that mention satan (more than once) and sing about digging dead ex-girlfriends.  It is a startling but strangely effective juxtaposition, the music makes you want to dance but the lyrics call for serious soul-searching.  What else would one expect from a song off an album with a slightly disturbing yet cheeky title:  Posthumous Release , which is [...]

Their (slightly cheesy) name may evoke feelings of sunshine, fresh-cut daisies, and rainbows, but Majical Cloudz are anything but. Maybe that’s the genius behind the Montreal duo of Devon Welsh and Matthew Otto; utilizing images of supposed happiness, turning them upside down, and churning out something else entirely. Whether that’s the band’s intention or not, Majical Cloudz’s latest release, Impersonator , is a dizzying achievement. Throughout ten stark, quiet tracks, the listener is transported up, down, around and sideways; an astonishing feat considering the delicate, impeccable stillness of these sounds. [...]

Random Access Memories , Daft Punk’s first non-soundtrack album in eight years, might be the biggest release of 2013 (not counting what Kanye might have in store). It’s also a humongous album, clocking in at over an hour and with several tracks breaching six minutes in length. This is a production that sounds like it broke the bank, but it a sincere enough musical send up to feel intimate and crafted.  Random Access Memories is not Daft Punk's strongest songwriting effort (that honor may always belong to  Discovery ), nor does it represent a progressive leap from what the [...]

• Daft Punk - Beyond
• Daft Punk - Within

Another new track from Phedre's incrementally released album Eterna . It's short and reminiscent of Portishead variety trip hop - so in other words it owns. Definitely rocking a cool new cinema (e.g. Godard) vibe.

Smith Westerns have always been able to craft the most catchy and seemingly effortless melodies.  The band started as a couple of kids in high school singing in unabashed earnestness about what they knew—parties and girls and having fun.  That was one of the things so intriguing and engaging about them.  Now as they're growing older they're beginning to drop these associations.  "3am Spiritual", the opening track of their upcoming album  Soft Will out June 25th, shows this slight shift.  The melodies are as good as they always were while the production is even more cleaned up than their [...]

Of all Daft Punk’s new material from Random Access Memories , their collaboration with Panda Bear, “Doin’ It Right,” had to be one of the most highly-anticipated. The slow-burning track is peppered with alternating vocals- both robot and human- that somehow feels like the perfect halfway point between the two artists’ distinctive sounds. "If you lose your way tonight/ That's how you know the magic's right," Panda Bear says, a bold, anthemic statement sung over a chilled-out, perfectly breezy groove.

  This would be single #2 from the latest album by producer Zo!, ManMade.  The track is called "Count to Five" and it features vocals from FE+ label mate Phone as well as Gwen Bunn (whose voice sounds heavenly on this track). This single could not have dropped at a better time - with its summertime, feel-good vibe we'd like to hear on a sunny day. The time signature of this song is what I find most interesting, as it deviates from most R&B/soul tracks and is played [...]

Here's a highlight from a recent covers compilation of early Lilys stuff curated by Clicky Clicky Music blog.  Boston based noise rockers, Soccer Mom chose "Ginger", the opening track of Lilys' 1994 EP,  A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns.  They offer a faithful rendition, bringing out the more shoegaze side of Lilys while suppressing slightly the dreaminess of Kurt Heasly's original vocals in favor of a low baritone doubled with octave female vocals which gives a slightly different ring to "she comes and she goes but she mostly goes".  The rest of the compilation is available here .

Compton's Problem dropped the throwback West Coast jam "Like Whaat" back in March; minimal but laced with one-liners and ultra-compressed claps 'n kicks, the original is perfect music to bump while cruising around in the 'Lac. But now international badman and selector Salva - the trap lord of Friends of Friends fame - has taken the original and tweaked it into a club-friendly jam, complete with shifty, staccato drums, cleverly chopped vocals, and a bevy of reverb-laden synths. Salva keeps the minimal spirit of the original alive, but isn't afraid to pair it with saccharine party-vibe maximalism.

Aspiring pop star Sean Holloran recently dropped his first big attempt at a summertime bubblegum track on SoundCloud. It's a bit too cheery for my darkwave tastes, but I bet it'll get some of you humming along the chorus and the updated rockabilly guitar work. Actually, kinda reminds me of that Andy Grammer song with some rifts... Check out the music video too along with his Twitter :

Ultra-new indie act Bel Air recently hit the scene with no doubt one of the better songs this month, "Song A." It's raw, sad, acoustic, melodic and the perfect cure for a brutally sunny day.

Disco made for a shimmering underwater cave in Super Mario 64 ; something you can swim through and dance against but also something that presents a sinister violence as disarming beauty. Stay Positive makes the kind of dance music that is as structurally deep as it is entertaining, and "Leipzig" is no exception.

What does anger sound like? Is it thrashing and malevolent, is it entombed in the fixtures of of rock & roll, and of traditionally confrontational music? Perhaps it is something that can be left to simmer, that can be stepped away from and tuned out. Perhaps it is the crawling din of a Throbbing Gristle record, and not the berserker hammer-hits of punk. Margaret Chardiet's voice is something to be contended with; hardly just a natural gift, this scream represents a nearly scientific dedication to rubbering boundaries, as well as a fairly intense emotional shotgun. If you’ve ever scream-sang so [...]

Two excellent new electronic acts- New York duo MS MR and Scottish trio CHVRCHES- unite for the first time on "Hurricane." On the light, breezy remix, CHVRCHES whip MS MR's debut single into a delightful, danceable frenzy.  Courtesy of an infectious, synth-inflected chorus, this is one you won't be getting out of your head anytime soon.

Once shrouded in almost complete mystery, Vår have now emerged from the shadows to present a beautiful, frightening, startling debut. What started as the lo-fi basement project of friends Elias Bender Rønnenfelt and Loke Rahbek has now evolved into a full and completely novel four-piece. The sounds on No One Dances Quite Like My Brothers - which range from rich and evocative to striking and scary-  more than speak for themselves, but still, Vår have a habit of hiding behind them. Who are these young men, exactly? Is Vår an Iceage side project? A dark dance duo? Or something else [...]

"Once" is one fifth of the title track from Laura Marling's upcoming album,  Once I Was an Eagle (which seems like it could be a weird Bill Callahan reference ), and the song is the very slight and very singular acoustic meditation that its name implies. Marling's voice buzzes with an adulthood that she is physically incapable of having experienced and grown tired of (the singer is only 23). The profundity of the line "I was a child once" - sung in a reflective whisper - seems like it should be lost on someone like Marling, but the [...]