From the funky Revolution -era Prince synth stabs and the skittering drum machine in the opening seconds of this new Beyoncé track, you can tell instantly that this is something The-Dream had his hands on. The illustrious producer / artist just released his latest opus, the magnificent "Body Work / F*** My Brains Out" earlier this month and now with "Schoolin' Life", which he both wrote and produced, he has another massive pop triumph under his belt. The aforementioned bombastic synths / drum combo actually recalls his own Prince-indebted track "Yamaha", which seeing how much we liked that [...]
"Lady Luck" by UK neo-soul man Jamie Woon had a video come out earlier this year that was pretty decent, but nowhere near the amount of excellence oozing out of this new take. This version matches a simple-yet-tantalizing scene of a young lady walking on a deserted street with some killer fx that look something like a Windows 95-era computer game overheating, the visual distortions perfectly syncing to the track's pulsating electro beat. Director Vincent Haycock shows great restraint in slowly introducing the effect which keeps it interesting from start to finish. Watch the video above and download [...]
As they say, better late than clever. Or was it never? No, I don't think that has ever been the case. You can blame Summer for its leisure arrival to great Northwest or the fact that a greater understanding of time management quite frankly just eludes me-this really only happens as it gets warmer, I swear. Whatever the case may be, Music For Ants' second Summer mix is here and is yours for the taking. Should these songs fail to grow on you... learn to seek the sun (and read better, of course). [...]
After having listened to Australian indie folk band, The Middle East 's EP, Recordings Of The Middle East over and over again for quite some time now, I was more than excited to hear that would be releasing their first full-length album. I immediately jumped at the chance to write a review of their newly released 14-track album, but upon listening to I Want That You Are Always Happy , it took longer than I had expected to fully wrap my mind around it, as each track exudes a very [...]
The sticker right on the front of Banjo or Freakout' s debut album has a press quote calling him "London's answer to Bradford Cox". It seems no one can get through a review of the album without mentioning either Panda Bear or Atlas Sound, a fact the label decided to embrace and emblazon right on the cover. While understandable to a point, such comparisons heap undue expectations on the record and ultimately belittle Alessio Natalizia's accomplishment. It only takes one listen to "Idiot Rain" to understand this point. The song is a buoyant, gauzy highlight of the [...]
Matthewdavid - International (feat. Dogbite) from BRAINFEEDER on Vimeo . Matthewdavid's excellent new record, Outmind , isn't so much an album as it is a transmission from an alternate reality. It sounds simultaneously futuristic and retro, playing like the soundtrack to a vintage public television broadcast on alien biology. (In the dimension Outmind hails from, we made contact decades ago.) With that in mind, it's fun to think of the video for "International" not as a promotional clip, but as a broadcast that has seeped over into our plane of existence. Playing [...]
All Tiny Creatures ' new album, Harbors , is a bit of an enigma. Each song is both similar and wildly different than the ones that surround it, making it a slippery record to dissect. This is due to both the pedigree of people involved in the project (Collections of Colonies of Bees/Volcano Choir) and the different guest vocalists that give each song a distinct feel. But as wily a creature as it is, it's nigh impossible not to get swept way in its hypnotic spell. Nowhere is this more evident than on "Glass Bubbles". Indicative of [...]
I may be a bit late to the party on Dinosaur Feathers , the band made rounds on the blogs last year, but ever since downloading their brand new single this weekend I've been hooked on the shockingly fresh indie pop band from Brooklyn. The band grabs from a number of different styles so I think it's pretty safe to say that if you dig any type of melody-based music from the past 50 years or so you can get into this. For me, their tunes evoke stuff like Bishop Allen, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, early of [...]
I'll admit I was a bit bummed when I heard that indie-pop couple Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp (aka The Rosebuds ) were calling their relationship off while continuing to make music together. The band always struck a perfect balance between melancholy and jubilation on their best tracks (see: "Hold Hands and Fight", "Cemetery Lawns") and it would seem a divorce may throw that balance off. "Woods", the newest released song off The Rosebud's fifth album Loud Planes Fly Low , shows a band still capable of making immensely catchy and upbeat pop songs while still [...]
Aussie indie poppers The Grates are back with a new single called "Turn Me On" and have a super-artsy Jean-Luc Godard-referencing music video to go along with it. Although the video's influences land squarely in the 60's, the bizarre imagery and random, fast-paced images fit in nicely with the current crop of indie music videos from directors like CANADA and Andreas Nilsson. "Turn Me On" is quite a bit heavier and moodier then the band's past singles like "Science is Golden" and "Burn Bridges" (think Yeah Yeah Yeahs), but once you get adjusted to the new sound it's [...]
Beirut 's music never fails to brighten up my day. The young folk troubadours emerged on the indie scene in 2006 with the brilliant debut album Gulag Orkestrar (which still holds up, by the way, as one of the best debuts of the last decade) and after the grand sophomore album The Flying Cub Cup , two EPs , and becoming oddly massive in Brazil (they have festivals dedicated to his music there, seriously ), Zach Condon and co. are finally back with a new [...]
While it's fun to hate on Pitchfork , the truth is that most of the time they get it right. There is that rare occasion though, when they'll put up a review that I find to be way off the mark. The most recent example being the review one of my favorite albums of the year, Patrick Wolf's Lupercailia . The reviewer's argument seems to be solely focused on an admittedly pompous quote from Wolf himself and the overly-kitschy lyrics. There's even an admission that "if you strip away the unctuous lyrical [...]
My introduction to Oklahoma chamber-pop band Other Lives came a few years ago, back when they were known as Kunek and released a lovely baroque-pop album titled Flight of the Flynn . Although the moniker has changed, they continue to make stunningly gorgeous tunes that invoke a dreamy, floating feeling. Their most recent single "For 123 is one of the most haunting, evocative songs I've heard this year. The lush string arrangement and hazy vocals are set against a wispy gallop that give the otherwise delicate track a sense of urgency. It results [...]
A couple weeks back I watched the documentary, Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him) (if you have Netflix, you can still watch it on Instant Queue), subsequently downloaded some of his albums and have been addicted ever since. Even though I'm still familiarizing myself with Nilsson's discography, it's easy to see how influential his music is on contemporary pop music and HAL is a prime example. The Irish band released their self-titled debut album in 2005 on Rough Trade Records to much acclaim and now after an extended hiatus are releasing [...]
French collective Megaforce have some of the straight-up coolest visual style out of any music video directors working today. I was introduced to them by the fantastic Metronomy video which featured sing-a-long bouncing balls going rogue (if that doesn't make sense, just watch the video and you'll see what I mean). I was also wowed by their Kid Cudi video and last year's highly metaphoric clip for Tame Impala. Even more-so then the others, the visuals blew me away in this music video for London band Is Tropical , [...]
Every since I heard of San Francisco's Painted Palms a few months back, I've been itching for them to release some new material. Their Canopy EP (out 6/27) continues to get tons of spins for me and with their recent signing to Secretly Canadian they will hopefully get around to releasing a full-length by the year's end. To hold us off temporarily though, the band released a cover of Dirty Projectors "I Will Truck", which premiered on I Guess I'm Floating (the very blog which introduced [...]
Spencer Krug really is the man of a thousand names. Whether it's Sunset Rubdown , Wolf Parade , Frog Eyes , Swan Lake, Fifths of Seven or most recently, Moonface , the ingenious Canadian singer/songwriter/keyboardist has undertaken a multitude of guises to release his music throughout the years. Not only is he one of the most prolific artists of our generation, but he's also one of the most talented. He rarely releases anything short of spectacular and "Fast Peter" is no exception. The sprawling, eight-minute track opens with an [...]
From the Chaff (in reference to this idiom ) is a semi-regular series where we post things that might have otherwise slipped through the cracks. Whether it's singles, EPs or just MP3s that we like, it's a place for us to collect the things we've heard lately but haven't had a chance to write about yet. MP3 yourfeetstoobig - Pintail I have a huge soft spot for the kind of cinematic, [...]
I tend to gravitate towards artists that sing about geography, whether it's Sufjan Stevens with his states project , The Mountain Goats with his various geographic odes , or The Rural Alberta Advantage's dedication to their Hometowns . This week Bon Iver released the first track, "Calgary" to his excellent new album Bon Iver, Bon Iver , which triggered a subsequent leak a couple hours later. Largely due to his relentless touring schedule, Bon Iver was inspired by places and [...]
Upon completion of their third album, Young Galaxy took the next logical step: The band sent the songs 3,500 miles away to be finished by a notoriously secretive producer. Young Galaxy waited for nine months while Dan Lissvik reshaped their songs and breathed chilly new life into them. The result is Shapeshifting , a lavish record with the capacity to lull you into a narcotic haze. Song titles like "The Angels Are Surely Weeping" and "Blown Minded" give a clue as to what Shapeshifting holds. It's a dreamy, hypnotic album packed with psychedelic imagery and [...]
Music For Kids Who Can't Read Good
Beck - 'I Just Started Hating Some People Today' [Listen]
[LISTEN] Gotye (Passion Pit Remix)
Princesse - Tell Me | MP3
