During a recent appearance on Mark Riley's BBC Radio 6 show, Unknown Mortal Orchestra applied the mellow syrup of their current album II to Otis Redding's "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay." The synthesis of their sound and the original is so natural that the cover feels only like a slightly tweaked version of Redding's own, yet somehow wholly new. Check it out below. Read More...
Last week we talked in detail about Low's incredible catalog , and today, they've dropped a new video from their recent album, the Jeff Tweedy-produced The Invisible Way ( No. 5 on the list). " Plastic Cup " opens The Invisible Way - it's a classic Low number, unhurried, dark, and warm, with Alan and Mimi harmonizing sweetly. The Ryley Fogg-directed black-and-white clip captures the band through a Golden Age-esque Vaseline-smeared lens, and those images are intercut with fucking weird shots of anonymous folks in elaborate white hoods, until the full scope of the [...]
Jerry Narrows and Daniel Koontz are the L.A. duo Flaamingos. The project started in 2011 after a chance bump-in in Echo Park. While they had been working on individual projects at the time, they had a past playing together in psych and shoegaze bands. Their history does influence the sound, but they're also working with a lot of new-wave inspiration here, with an almost classical feel to it. The languid "All I Wanna Do Is Live" from their upcoming self-titled album deftly displays their ability to meld those genres into soothsaying post-punk. Check it out below. Read More...
When he's not co-leading Hot Chip, Alexis Taylor fronts About Group, an improv-happy supergroup that also includes Spiritualized's John Coxon and This Heat's Charles Hayward. And next month, they'll release Between The Walls , their third album. The first song we've heard from the album is the wide-eyed, idiosyncratic groove "Words," which you can stream right now at Rolling Stone . Between The Walls is out 7/1 on Domino .
Califone, the experimental Chicago roots-rock band, haven't released an album since 20092s All My Friends Are Funeral Singers , but they're back this fall with a new one called Stitches . For the first time, the band left Chicago to record the LP, hitting various studios around the American southwest instead. (They even recorded in Arizona, home state of Calexico, the band I always confuse Califone with.) The album's title track is a bummed-out downbeat drone that should sound pretty great on long road trips. Listen to it and check out the album's tracklist [...]
Last night, Paul McCartney more or less took over The Colbert Report for a special hour-long episode, which focused on a Wings reunion and featured a whopping six performances. In a 12-minute interview, McCartney hung with Colbert comedically, perhaps because Colbert wasn't going to absolutely skewer a fucking Beatle. And over the course of the show, McCartney sang "I've Just Seen A Face," "Hi, Hi Hi," "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kitel," "Listen To What The Man Said," "Lady Madonna," and, as a web exclusive, "Birthday." Watch the interview and some of the performances below. [...]
Kanye West's new album Yeezus is now five days away from release, and we still haven't heard a full studio version of any of its songs, which is nuts. But last night, Kanye held a listening session for the album in Basel, Switzerland, and he took the opportunity to perform a furious, passionate a capella rendition of " New Slaves ." Someone in the crowd caught video of that performance and of Kanye playing the Daft Punk collab "On Sight" from a laptop. Also last night, on Kanye's website, Kanye posted a 30-second video of him performing a [...]
Legendary sloppy-transcendent Minneapolis punks the Replacements broke up in 1991, and they haven't played any shows since then. But last year, frontman Paul Westerberg and drummer Tommy Stinson got back together to record Songs For Slim , a benefit EP that raised money for former Replacements guitarist Slim Dunlap, who recently suffered a stroke; we posted their cover of Gordon Lightfoot's " I'm Not Sayin' ." (Guitarist Bob Stinson died in 1995, and drummer Chris Mars opted not to participate.) And now a version of the Replacements with Westerberg and Stinson will get together to play at [...]
Georgian sludge-metal outfit Kylesa has had us at full attention these days: Tom called their new Ultraviolet “ one of the year’s best rock LPs thus far ”; it was our Album Of The Week to close out May; and it made our list of the top 25 best albums of 2013 so far . And recently, in support of Ultraviolet , Kylesa performed three of their most beloved older tracks on the Violitionist Sessions . The Sessions are a series of interviews and performances with bands that either hail from [...]
The Justin Timberlake-co-owned new Myspace apparently launched today, despite the fact that registration has already been opened to the public and the editorial has been delivering a lot of content. For today's official opening ceremony, the site has released two commercials directed by photographer Ryan McGinley. The ads feature a ton of musicians partying, like Pharrell, DIIV, Sky Ferreira, Trash Talk, Charli XCX, Riff Raff, Schoolboy Q, Ryan Hemsworth, Mac Miller, and Ciara, as well as some fairly gross but brief making out. Check out two versions of the clip below, one soundtracked by the Orwells' "Mallrats La La La" [...]
" Thousand Year Old Child " is a deeply pretty song from Crawling Up The Stairs , the new album by the gently expansive Austin fuzz-rock trio Pure X. And its new video, from director Malcolm Elijah , works as a study of the deep lines on the face of Bob Olson, the video's lead actor. The beautifully shot black-and-white clip follows Olson's quick transition from haggard farmer to cabaret star, and it finds Olson lip-syncing for helium-voiced Pure X frontman Nate Grace. It's a great video, and you can watch it below. Read More...
When we did this poll last year, we carefully chose slightly different language, asking you guys not to vote for the "Song Of The Summer," but the "Indie Song Of The Summer." Is there a difference? Hell if I know, man. I'm not even sure if "indie" is a real thing anymore - and if it is a thing, I have no idea how to define it. So this year, we've dropped the "Indie" qualifier entirely, and we're making eligible anything that you guys are listening to. So it could be " Black Skinhead or " Get [...]
You can always keep going. You can always do more. One more word, one more mile, one more hour. It's as good as it is bad, but as long as you're moving there's more to do/see/experience/freak out about. Out Hud, for the brief time that they were a band, felt like the perfect soundtrack to the claustrophobic element of newfound adult freedom. The first time I heard S.T.R.E.E.T. D.A.D. , I couldn't figure out if I thought it was brooding or joyful. I guess it's both, which is part of the allure of Out Hud. They [...]
Joey Bada$$, the Brooklyn teenager who's made quite a name for himself in the past year by reviving mid-'90s New York rap styles, was supposed to release his new mixtape Summer Knights today; we'd already posted the early single " Word Is Bond ." That didn't happen; Joey had to push back the tape's release. But as a consolation prize, he recently posted a warm new track called "95 Til Infinity," one that has nothing to do with the Souls Of Mischief classic its title references. On the track, Joey gets rah-rah over a soft-focus beat from the [...]
Since releasing their heady debut LP, Album , in 2010, Hooded Fang’s hooky, stoner-garage antics have taken the young Canada natives out of their bedroom studio and into the spotlight: The group made the Polaris Long List in 2011. Their new record, Gravez - whose single "Ode To Subterrania" we previewed a while back - dropped on 5/28 via Daps / Full Time Hobby . Read More...
Tyga is not an especially good rapper by any metric, but he still made my favorite single of last year, in any genre, with " Rack City ." That track seems to hover in space. Its evil wobbling synth-bass, icy fingersnaps, mechanized hey chants, and perfectly places snare smacks are all just as important as Tyga's nasal sneer, which itself is more purposeful than it is on any other Tyga song. The chorus is a stutter, meaningless enough to become a mantra. And the man who really deserves credit for "Rack City" is its producer and co-writer DJ [...]
I tend to associate Sacred Bones Records with spare, cold post-punk/electronic/noise - Pharmakon, Vår, Lust For Youth, Cult Of Youth ... even Zola Jesus, really - but Arizona's Destruction Unit don't quite fit that description, even though they do fit pretty nicely on the Sacred Bones roster. Destruction Unit are basically a roots-based rock band whose hook-heavy psychedelic songs are delivered through terrifying feedback squalls and (presumably) several dozen cheap/broken effects pedals. Their closest Sacred Bones analogue is probably the Men, which especially makes sense, as Destruction Unit's forthcoming Sacred Bones debut, Deep Trip (which follows a handful [...]
"Alarm" is another tune from Christopher Laufman, bka Wise Blood’s upcoming debut full-length id . It's the kind of off-kilter, multi-layered pop jam we've come to expect from Laufman, with an alarm pulsing in the background, almost like a wild and vivid dream you refuse to wake up from despite being alerted that it's time to. Check it out below. Read More...
Lead singer of psych band Dead Confederate and member of supergroup Diamond Rugs, T. Hardy Morris will release his debut solo album Audition Tapes , but it's not the kind of brash rock you'd expect from his résumé. "Beauty Rest" is a prime example of the calming beauty Morris is bringing. Its black-and-white clip was filmed in Rock House in Thompson, GA, which is recognized as the oldest surviving stone house in the state. Morris chose to film here as part of his Places In Peril project inspired by the Georgia Trust For Historic Preservation's list of historical structure [...]
Northampton, Mass. indie-rock traditionalists Speedy Ortiz are a month away from releasing their debut LP, Major Arcana . Along with like-minded axe-slingers the Crutchfield sisters (aka Swearin' and Waxahatchee) and Yuck/Hebronix, Speedy Ortiz are very faithfully updating a portion of the Matador Records catalog (OLE 35 - OLE 125, more or less), and absolutely finding essential new ground to cover, new corners to brighten. The first single to be released from Major Arcana was the raging " Tiger Tank ," but the album's second single, "No Below," is Speedy Ortiz at their most contemplative. Frontwoman [...]
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Frau – Tarian Sari (stream)
Arctic Monkeys | Do I Wanna Know? (Official Video)
