UK indie funk artist Kindness first made a blip in 2009 with a cover of the Replacements' " Swingin' Party ," eventually releasing that as a single alongside B-side "Gee Up." Now, as his debut LP approaches, Kindness's Adam Bainbridge made a video for the song, which is part performance and part sketch, chronicling a video shoot that's aimless to some and disappointing to others. In a landscape with indie rockers taking themselves way too seriously, this is a nice change of pace. Watch it below. Read More...
All-female Beastie-affiliated crew Luscious Jackson were one of the more underrated bands of the '90s. Their three albums, all worth owning, defined a very particular form of urbane, cosmopolitan cool, wrapping harmonies around each other with ease and stepping on genre lines without making a big deal about it. The band made sugary alt-pop and hard push-pull funk sound like they could coexist peacefully as parts of the same whole, and they made that feat look deceptively easy. After breaking up in 2000, they're back together now, and their first post-breakup single "Are You Ready?" finds them stepping effortlessly back [...]
Last year, the fiery, intense Sacramento noise-rap crew Death Grips released Exmilitary , their bracing blast of a debut mixtape. The group plans on following that one up with two albums this year, and the pounding, tough-to-decipher "Blackjack" is the first track we've heard from the first of those albums. Listen to it below. Read More...
Last last year, the tough, aspirational Huntsville rap duo G-Side released the excellent and vaguely overlooked album Island . One of its standouts was "Gettin' It," which featured the singer Join Tiffany, the blue-collar Maybach Music rapper Stalley, and a gorgeously psychedelic track from production team Block Beattaz. That track now has a low-budget video - not much to look at, but a good reason to revisit the song. Matt McGinley and John Turner direct. Watch it below. Read More...
Last fall we heard the debut from mellow Aussie indie rockers Twerps, a record replete with reverb-heavy, hooky guitar jams. Recently, they put out a Mac Photo Booth-y video for that record's penultimate track, "Through The Day." Check out the video and some upcoming tour dates below. Read More...
Nile Rodgers co-founded and led Chic, probably the single greatest act of the disco era. He produced "Upside Down" for Diana Ross and "Let's Dance" for David Bowie and "Like A Virgin" for Madonna. He's in the process of whupping cancer. As far as dance-pop goes, he's basically the motherfucking man. And he's apparently also working with Daft Punk on some sort of collaboration. As Consequence Of Sound points out , Rodgers tells Australia's Faster Louder that he and the French duo got together to work on music just last week: "We were just jamming [...]
Sauna is a co-ed teenage garage-pop band from Denver whose ramshackle surf-guitar attack has all the goofy charm you'd expect from a band with that description. For proof, check out the band's new "Glitter Party" video, a low-budget, happy-go-lucky affair that reminds me of the montages from Monkees episodes. (Also, if you like watching people puke glitter, this is your video.) Watch the clip and download the MP3 below. Read More...
Last week, Jack White reentered our brains by announcing the solo album Blunderbuss and giving us the superlatively stripped-back new song " Love Interruption ." The "Love Interruption" single is out now, and it includes a non-album track called "Machine Gun Silhouette" as a B-side. It's a jumpy, bluesy yarn with touches of old-school country, and someone uploaded it to YouTube, so listen now before the powers that be yank it down. It's below. Read More...
Ex-Ponytail guitarist Dustin Wong's spacey new jam is called "Pink Diamond," and the track's accompanying visual fits nicely with the track's blown-out, psychedelic vibe. It's like an indie rock-centric Spirograph! Did you know that there's a direct correlation between the decline of Spirograph and the rise in gang activity ? Watch the video download the song below. Read More...
The producers of the Grammys have never been afraid to give the world fascinating, embarrassing pileups, and this year's ceremony could be a doozy. As the Associated Press reports , this Sunday's ceremony will include a vageuly ravey segment in a tent space outside the Staples Center, with 1000 fans. That's where the Foo Fighters and Deadmau5 will team up to perform a live version of Deadmau52s remix of the Foos song "Rope." And it's also where David Guetta will perform with Chris Brown and Lil Wayne. Hopefully, everyone will wear clothes entirely made out of glowsticks. [...]
You'd think that when a band called Metallica books itself a weekend-long music festival, most of the bands on the bill would be metal. You'd be wrong. As Rolling Stone reports , the thrash overlords will headline and curate their very own Orion Music + More Festival , which comes to Atlantic City, New Jersey 6/23-24. And the lineup, weirdly enough, skews very heavily toward indie rock: Arctic Monkeys, Modest Mouse, Best Coat, Fucked Up, the Gaslight Anthem, Titus Andronicus, Hot Snakes, Roky Erickson, the Black Angels, a Place To Bury Strangers, Lucero, Cage The [...]
This year's Juno Awards take place in Ottawa on 4/1, and today the nominees for their annual prizes were revealed. A lot of familiar names - Drake, Feist, Avril Lavigne - headline the nominees. Something tells me the Black Keys won't be happy with a selection or two. Two Christmas albums made the "Best Album" list, so either it was a bad year for Canadian albums or the best year for Christmas albums ever! Shatner hosts, obviously. Scan the nominees below. Read More...
A year and a half ago, I had a perfectly lovely telephone conversation with Isobel Campbell, the former Belle & Sebastian member who has recorded three ultra-satisfying albums of Nancy Sinatra pastiche with Mark Lanegan. And during that conversation, I learned something about Lanegan that seems to throw this entire career into stark relief: He is a massive fan of the Los Angeles Clippers. More specifically, he is someone who will fly on three separate planes to get to a Clippers game. And given that the Clippers have historically been one of the great lost causes of professional [...]
Name: The Walkmen Progress Report: Band gets to work with Phil Ek on forthcoming studio album. Aside from taking a victory lap around North America to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their debut album, Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone , members of The Walkmen have been holed up in a studio with Phil Ek working on their seventh studio album. According to frontman Hamilton Leithauser, the follow up to 2010's Lisbon will be a "very different sounding" record … even if [...]
Late last year, handsome British man Eugene McGuinness made an impression with his sharp, colorful video for " Lion ." Now McGuinness is back again with a video for his rockabilly-inflected jam "Shotgun," with "Lion" directors Thirtytwo returning, and if anything it's even more memorable than its predecessor. McGuinness spends the entire video looking cool and unflappable while wearing expensive-looking clothes and standing in meticulously well-designed camera shots, and also stuff blows up. Watch it below. Read More...
The video for St. Vincent's Strange Mercy track "Cheerleader" opens with a giant Annie Clark laying prone on an art-museum floor, looking like a Damien Hirst shark. It would be a malicious act of spoilerization if I described anything else that happened after, but know that things get as unsettling and uncanny as they always do in St. Vincent videos. Hiro Murai directs. Watch it below. Read More...
Since announcing plans for a new album last October , the Islands' Nick Thorburn has given us " Hallways " and " This Is Not A Song " (proving, indeed, one man is the Islands). Now, the entirety of A Sleep & A Forgetting is streaming. Head below to hear it. Read More...
On first listen, Interstellar , the new album from former Vivian Girls/Crystal Stilts/Dum Dum Girls drummer Frankie Rose, sounds like a great leap forward - the moment Rose leaves behind ramshackle indie-pop and toward a more glimmering, expansive, lush take on her own tough-romantic style. We've already posted " Know Me ," " Night Swim ," and the album's title track . And now the entire LP is streaming over at Spin . Listen to it over here and tell us what you think of it in the comments section. [...]
Brooklyn-via-Columbia, MO indie rockers are prepping their follow up to 20092s It's Frightening , and recently we caught their video for first single " Heavy Metal ." Now, the group has dropped another track, the rumbling rhythmic groove "Temporary." Download it below. Read More...
Ester , the first album from the bent British indie-pop crew Trailer Trash Tracys, has finally arrived on our shores. And to mark the occasion, we've got a remix of their track " Candy Girl " from New York experimental mainstays Black Dice, who turn the track into staticy, chaotic fizz. Download their reworking of the song below. Read More...
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Watch: Trailer for Dave Grohl’s documentary, Sound City
R.I.P Whitney Houston
Whitney Houston dead at age 48
