Blog: Stereogum

The prolific but reliably wide-eyed San Francisco psych-pop band Sonny & The Sunsets, who always sound amazed at their own ability to make music, will soon release Antenna To The Afterworld , a concept album that's both about aliens and about the death of one of frontman Sonny Smith's friends. We posted the early track " Dark Corners ," and now they've shard a second one. "Palmreader" is a lush, full guitar-tapestry that reminds me a bit of the Chills or the Feelies, and it works as a prettily numb meditation on death. Listen below. Read More...

The traveling rap festival Rock The Bells always brings a deep and impressive lineup, but this year, it will try something new, potentially upstaging the famous hologram-Tupac moment at last years Coachella. This year's Rock The Bells, which will take the form of four different two-day festivals around the country, will feature two dead rap legends in hologram form: Ol' Dirty Bastard, who will perform during the Wu-Tang Clan's set, and Eazy-E, who will virtually rejoin his old proteges Bone Thugs N Harmony. Maybe a Big Pun hologram would've required too many projectors? As always, the fest will [...]

While not barefoot and relatively sedate onstage with Tame Impala, bassist Nick Allbrook plays the part of kinetically charged, livewire frontman for his own band Pond, a project cut from similarly psilocybic, riff-loaded, flanged-out cloth. Allbrook's ecstatic fits tend to be one step shy of you being legit worried he's having a seizure, though obviously he's got the stoner-mellow thing down cold, too. So "Giant Tortoise," the first single and video from Pond's forthcoming fifth LP Hobo Rocket , has all those elements in one - it opens with a Primal Scream churn before moving into decidedly Mercury Revved [...]

The Lonely Island are now less than a month away from releasing album #3, The Wack Album , and last week, they kicked off their Wack Wednesdays series with the all-star video for " Spring Break Anthem ." Today, they follow it up with a stream of "I Fucked My Aunt," an emotive slow-jam that reunites them with their " I'm On A Boat " collaborator T-Pain. Pretty much the entire joke is right there in the title, but if your heart doesn't flutter at least a little bit when T-Pain robo-coos, "What is sex anywaaaay?," you are dead [...]

...Like Clockwork is the name of the new QOTSA LP, and also the regularity with which we've been publishing QOTSA posts lately. Am I right ladies?!?!? But seriously also. We have been posting a lot on this new Queens record because they've been giving us lots of reasons to, and most of those reasons are pretty good! There's been two videos and live radio sessions and strong singles like " My God Is The Sun " and " I Sat By The Ocean ." Today we revisit those last two via [...]

Considering that Phoenix have been on a neverending publicity tour behind their new album Bankrupt! for something like a month now, it's a bit of a shock that they're only now getting around to playing Late Night With Jimmy Fallon . Last night, however, they corrected the oversight, appearing on the show to play the deep cut "The Real Thing" while standing in a cloud of silvery confetti. And as an online bonus, they also played the presumable second single "Trying To Be Cool." Watch both below. Read More...

Dave Sitek's been moonlighting behind the boards for Beady Eye's new record , but his day job is very much a going concern, too. TV On The Radio headlined the Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Festival a few weeks ago, and last weekend, they closed out the UK edition of All Tomorrow's Parties (which they also curated). At ATP, the band debuted a new track, "Mercy," which has a decidedly punkier edge than much of the last TVOTR LP, to the extent you can compare a final studio product to a fan-captured video of a new and presumably unfinished [...]

Denmark's MØ, born Karen Marie Ørsted, has made these pages via a couple of videos , and as a highlight of my trip to Oslo for by:Larm this year . With this new single, "Waste Of Time," MØ's announcing a new label deal (shouts to Chess Club/RCA Victor), so that is ostensibly good news for her fans. But the better news for interested parties is that "Waste Of Time" is a confident and catchy thing, showcasing MØ in vulnerable and powerful modes via cooing harmonies, hooks with seraphic head voice, and a few "blaoaw blaoaw"s for [...]

Back in 2011 Austra released Feel It Break - a wonderful bit of gothy electro-pop weirdness that would ultimately become one of that year’s most beloved releases (especially for those with a particular penchant for glitchy art pop and operatic vocals). Now, some two years and many, many tour dates later, the band returns with Olympia , which is slated for release early next month. According to vocalist Katie Stelmanis, Olympia is not only a much more collaborative effort, it’s also a much more personal one as well. I sat down with Stelmanis to discuss [...]

The Chicago soul/gospel legend Mavis Staples has now recorded two albums with Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy serving as producer, and on the second of those, the forthcoming One True Vine , Tweedy and his young son Spencer also play all the instruments. We've already posted one track from the album, a cover of Funkadelic's " Can You Get To That ." But the second song we've heard from it might be even funkier. "I Like The Things About Me" rides a slobbering bass stomp, and it's got a guitar solo that shows more sidelong flair than possibly anything else [...]

Jordan Greiger's Hospital Ships' is gearing to release a new full-length Destruction In Yr Soul . While he's left behind his legacy of bedroom recording behind and is crafting fuller sounds with collaborators, he hasn't balked at the intimacy of the build-up. We heard it with " Come Back To Life " and it's here, too, on the ascendent "If It Speaks." Check out the track below. Read More...

• Hospital Ships - If it Speaks

From last year's En Yay Sah , Sierra Leone dance music artist Janka Nabay's project with NY group the Bubu Gang, comes "Feba." According to Nabay, the song tackles a difficult side to paternity: "'Feba' is about a baby that you have with a woman that you are really are in love with, but you are not totally sure is yours. Even though the baby looks sort of like you, you are still not sure of the back story." Its video, directed by previous collaborator Jon Casey, is also one of relationship turmoil. But here, it's about [...]

Weed is a band from Vancouver that sounds way better than you would expect from a band named Weed, and "Set Me Back," the first single from their debut album, Deserve , is especially good: It's pummeling and driving mass of riffs and heavy drums, all blurred and softened through a warm cloud of distortion. But honestly there are a lot of bands who can pretty much do that sort of thing - but what makes Weed really stand out are their vocals. Sometimes beautifully sung, other times bitterly screamed, always gripping, they emotionally ground the band as the [...]

• Weed - Set Me Back

The slick Detroit duo Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. released their Patterns EP last week, and we posted their tracks " If You Didn't See Me (Then You Weren't On The Dancefloor) " and " Hiding ." And now they've got a charming if slightly disjointed video for the EP track "Dark Water," one that has the two band members appearing as claymation figures piloting a submarine, while various stage-musical types act out a story of a girl underwater. Watch it below. Read More...

Torche's last full-length outing, 20122s Harmonicraft , was an absolute beast, but since then, they've stepped up their game yet another level on 7-inch one-offs like the fucking ridiculous " Harmonslaught " and now "Keep Up." The new track is Torche at their stoner-metal smoothest: all beach grooves and waxed-to-a-shine guitars. The single is being released via Volcom Vinyl Club in July. But you can spin the A-side here, now. Tour dates below, too. Read More...

• Torche - Keep Up

You haven't always been able to hear it in the actual music that comes out of the city, but Baltimore's DIY-heavy indie rock scene has always been a beautifully unsnobby and pop-happy sort of place. I haven't lived there in nearly eight years, and haven't spent nearly enough time there since I moved out, but I cherish memories of Baltimore as a place where you'd argue the merits of Three 6 Mafia deep cuts between bands at, like, an Out Hud show. When the rest of the indie world was still proudly ignorant about rap or pop music, Baltimore indie [...]

Canada's Ryan Hemsworth is gearing up to release his new EP Still Awake next week and we have a taste of what's to come with "Perfectly." While Hemsworth can straddle many spheres with his beat-work, from steely to glittery cloud rap confections, there is something about this track that, despite its brightness, sounds like a post-Dischord, pre-" The Middle " pop-emo. There is something about it, sonically, that feels like a companion piece to Jimmy Eat World's " Goodbye Sky Harbor ." But hey, so did " F.I.L.A. " from The-Dream's album Love King and I [...]

• Mixmag - Perfectly

Everything feels heavier at night. Alone at home after dark, whatever solipsistic sentiment was developing by day takes on titanic proportions. All sense of perspective vanishes along with the sunlight. Melodrama is heightened. Longing feels more desperate, mistakes more extreme. Deep, dark brooding can take over in a way that usually doesn't happen at noon (unless you are Wayne Coyne ). In the quiet of "the Bible-black predawn," as Jeff Tweedy put it , any music can become more resonant, even the balls-out aggression of Ke$ha or Kvelertak. Call it the movie theater effect. But some [...]

NYC garage quartet Shark? seem to inhabit a world where primarily everyone dons a poor quality Ronalde Reagan (I assume this is Reagan. Just a janky, janky Reagan) mask in their normal lives. They wear a Reagan mask when they're at band practice, making out, and stealing people's purses. It's the right display of Shark?'s sense of humor, whose anti-ode to the women of the west coast "California Grrls" may be vitriol-laden but seems to have a tongue-in-cheek sensibility to it. The band has just released the song with Old Flame Records, who will also drop their full-length Savior [...]

• Shark? - “California Grrls”

BTW alums Wampire release their debut full-length Curiosity today and have dropped a quirky clip for album cut "Orchards" in tandem. The video features the duo on a road trip that goes haywire when an unexpected extra passenger comes along for the ride. It's the right kind of silly for a band who named themselves after a nickname gifted to member Eric Phipps by a group of goths in Germany. Check it out below. Read More...