Blog: See What You Hear.com

Matias Aguayo - Rollerskate Songs where vocals can effectively replace every instrument are hard to resist - and this track illustrates why. You'd be hard pressed to find a more infectious a cappella. Matias Aguayo is a DJ and producer who was born in Chile, grew up in Germany, and divides his time between Argentina and Paris. His latest release, Ay Ay Ay , is full of these vocal-heavy voyages, sailing away from his minimalism background and leaving you transfixed in the process. MySpace Buy [...]

Sleigh Bells - Ring Ring This is probably the best song you could begin the week with. For a start, it samples one of my all-time favourite tracks, Funkadelic's 'Can You Get to That', and puts it to brilliant use by being almost as catchy and uplifting. Sleigh Bells are a Brooklyn duo who met in a restaurant one summer, got locked into a conversation about music and became a band a week later. They insist that they're only at the demo stage, with a full-length LP due to be recorded in the near future, but [...]

These guys, thevoluptuous, have a host of similar covers on their YouTube channel , such as Deerhunter , Fleet Foxes , Pixies , Dirty Projectors , Broken Social Scene and much more. Watch Beirut's 'Scenic World' and M.I.A.'s 'Paper Planes' below.

Evening Hymns - Dead Deer Evening Hymns is Jonas Bonnetta, a 28-year-old from somewhere near Orono, Ontario, who writes songs when he's sick and runs a saw mill part-time when he's not. For Spirit Guides , Bonnetta convinced 17 musician friends to help him record an album of soft, Sufjan-like tunes about nature and the power to overcome, tied together with a beautiful cover and title. Give this track a chance to unfold, you'll be glad you did. MySpace Buy [...]

CANT - Ghosts Don't know how I let this one slip by for so long. This is a glimpse at what shape the solo work of Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor is set to take: ethereal harmonies, immaculate production and a gorgeous sound perfect for Sunday evening. Not too different from GB, then. Can't wait to hear more of this. You can buy the track as a 73 with an unreleased Arthur Russel track on Taylor's Terrible records. Photo by christian.greller [...]

Idiot Glee - All Packed Up I wished all my weekends could sound like this. But so began Saturday, with a link to the soothing, Panda Bear-like sounds of Idiot Glee (James Friley of Lexington, Kentucky). At the moment he's got a gorgeous four-track demo, a Daytrotter session booked for late January and some appearances lined up at SXSW 2010. Get on it. MySpace Photo by Ya-ko , licensed under Creative Commons

• Idiot Glee - All Packed Up

RatTail - Go Green RatTail are a figment of my imagination. They are not a three-piece from Toronto because they do not exist. Don't listen to this track; you'll only want to know more and I just don't have the kind of answers you'll need to hear. Thanks to StG for the find MySpace Band blog Photo by moominsean , licensed under Creative Commons.

Yarn Owl - Yarn Blues I found these guys after skimming from one MySpace profile after another and they make for a fine discovery: poppy multi-harmonies from Pullman, Washington, with a tape entitled Tiny Dots out on Leftist Nautical Antiques and a six-song release called Stay Warm due in the new year. MySpace Official/Buy Photo by engelene , licensed under Creative Commons

Memoryhouse - Foreground (Grizzly Bear cover) A lovely cover version of Veckatimest's closing track by a duo from Ontario. It's on the acoustic guitar, sung by a female voice and is backed by a smart arrangement - but the sentiment remains intact. Memoryhouse describe themselves as the bedroom recording project of a neo-classical composer and a photographer, and they will release a four song EP entitled The Years for free download on January 5. MySpace Photo by [...]

UUVVWWZ - Castle UUVVWWZ are a four-piece from Lincoln, Nebraska, who aren't sure what type of music they make, who their influences are, or even what their name means - and their songs reflect that uncertainty, not quite going where you expect them to.  Best to give this one a play and decide for yourself. Their self-titled album is out now on Saddle Creek. Buy MySpace Band blog Photo by [...]

The Black Hollies - Gloomy Monday Morning Some of the darkest clouds I've ever seen have just rolled in, bringing nightfall with them. So it's time for some energetic and infectious neo-garage pop from New Jersey's The Black Hollies. This song, written for a girl that singer Angelo Morey used to watch from afar as she smoked cigarettes at the bus stop beside his workplace, is from the band's third album, Softly Towards The Light , recently released through Ernest Jenning Records. You can download the track for free [...]

Dead Man's Bones - Dead Hearts This one is perfect for some late night listening... Ever since Bon Iver blew up, it seems that a lot of new acts have caught on to the fact that having a charming backstory can send your songs blazing through the blogosphere. Recently someone suggested to me that Summer Camp is just one guy and a self-generated mythology, so from now on I shall remain sceptical... But I do like the sound of Dead Man's Bones being two guys who hated each other, forced to spend time together [...]

Javelin - Vibrationz Just what you need on a Monday morning: a sprightly sound inspired by '80s boomboxes. Brooklyn-based Javelin are a pair of cousins (George Langford and Tom Van Buskirk) whose cut-and-paste production techniques re-contextualise everything from 8-bit computer sounds to record sleeves. At their shows, audience members are encouraged to bring along their own boomboxes and tune in to the FM channel the pair broadcast their performance on, making for "battery-powered mobile parties”. Their next 123 (the last one sold out almost instantly) will be "Number Two," set for release on February 16th through [...]

Mark McGuire - Explosion Arm This is from an EP entitled Losing Sleep , a collection of hypnotic instrumental pieces recorded over the summer between the hours of 3am and 6am. But the stand out track is an epic live take where Mark McGuire (who is also a member of Emeralds) utilises a certain Pink Floyd guitar sound to build an extraordinary composition of loops and layers. Definitely one for those late night journeys. The CD-R was limited to a run of 60 copies and has since sold out, but be sure to visit McGuire's [...]

Avi Buffalo - What's In It For? Avi Buffalo is an indie-pop four-piece based around the infectious ideas of teenage songwriter Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg. The group is from Long Beach, California, and their debut album will be out on Sub Pop sometime in the spring. Worth keeping an eye out for. MySpace Official Photo by christian.greller , licensed under Creative Commons

Nurses - Technicolor The minute I heard the opening track of Apples Acres , I had a feeling it would become one of my favourite albums of the year.  The unpredictable melodies and the dynamic between their harmonies remind me of Yeasayer - but without the production trickery. Nurses is principally Aaron Chapman and John Bowers, best friends since their school days and roommates for five years, who recorded the album in the attic of a Victorian house in Portland, where they were living. Apples Acres is out now on Dead Oceans and [...]

I think is the closest any video has come to properly capturing the David Thomas Broughton experience.

Wayne Coyne is about to reveal the meaning of life. He’s sitting in his living room in Oklahoma City, in a compound resembling Edinburgh Castle, staring at a giant inflatable sun and reclining on an oversized couch made of white fur. The dog he’s petting thinks the couch is its mother. Coyne is possibly the only person that would seem perfectly at place in a scene like this. When not trying to scare local children or dying his pets pink, the singer has been concocting the [...]

“Whoops!” – tUnE-yArDs’ Merrill Garbus is falling off her seat. She’s vivacious, engaged and sailing on nervous energy, barely recognisable from the person who introduced herself with the words, ‘Listen, I’m nervous’, just hours before. She was postponing the interview and skipping dinner, she explained, to make sure her voice was in the right shape. From a distance, there seemed little reason to be jittery. Two nights earlier she took Paris by surprise, upstaging tour mates Dirty Projectors and clearing €600 worth of albums and merchandise after the show. Even now, hiding in a darkened room in the [...]

Fan-made stop-motion video by the Tomjoetwins , for BJM's 'Let's Go Fucking Mental' from the forthcoming album, Who Killed Sgt Pepper ? You can preview the record through a series of YouTube videos on the band's official website . Thanks to Anton for the video link.