Blog: The Pop Stereo!

As a hugely talented producer, remixer, DJ, label boss and composer Hyper has excelled building a loyal and global fan base as well as commanding huge respect from his peers. Having shot into the consciousness of almost every dance head and aficionado ten years ago with the eponymous Y3K compilation series, he has since released two critically acclaimed albums, remixed everyone from Foals to Futureheads, Pink to Paul Van Dyke and released some of the biggest compilation series’ over the last decade. Now he's back with his new single, My World and as one [...]

Golden Glow is the charming solo project of Manchester singer/songwriter Pierre Hall. Son of a British father from Trinidad and Tobago, and a Mauritian mother, Pierre's early years were spent near Liverpool before moving to Manchester at 18 for university. While in Manchester and just as Pierre's previous band, Lead Balloons were ending their time together in 2009, Pierre was in a serious automobile accident that left him unable to walk for nearly six months. Although the recovery was tough, and this was [...]

The Brooklyn prog-punk trio Old Monk has confirmed the release of their debut album Birds of Belize on Los Angeles's Eenie Meenie Records. The album will hit the streets via compact disc, digital and vinyl formats on January 17th, 2012. The digital version of the album will contain three bonus tracks. Blending a love for of progressive rock, indie rock and pop punk has produced a sound that will sound familiar to most ears. But the one ingredient that stands out from the rest is the energy that Old Monk puts into their [...]

Who better to write the book on fun than the ever crush worthy Kid Sister ? The MC born Melisa Young not only spent 2011 tearing down shows all over North America - from the Magic 8 Ball tour with A-Trak to NYC's 80,000 deep Electric Zoo festival - but managed to bring that boundless on-stage energy to studio sessions with some of today's most exciting producers. The Kiss & Tell EP offers four of Kid Sister's latest jams with a diverse crew of collaborators. "Mickey" is a club workout from [...]

Electronic. Indie. Dance. Pop. Rock. Today The Moon, Tomorrow The Sun is all about the collaborative. It’s about the connections between sound and people, it’s about the heart and the head. It’s for mistakes and triumphs, and against arrogance and under-confidence. A band of four: two girls, two boys. Noisy, dancy, loud, sincere, sweaty, lovable, hardworking. After three EPs and endless touring, it was time to put what they’d become to physical memory: a record they could be overwhelmingly proud of and their current and future fans couldn’t stop listening too. That result is WILDFIRE [...]

French born band The Lanskies are ready to take over the world with their highly anticipated North American debut EP, Romeo, out now via The MuseBox Distribution. The much talked about group fronted by Liverpool born Lewis Evans, made waves at CMJ and Filter’s Culture Collide and are keeping up momentum. Romeo is an ear catching EP of four tracks that sound something like a long lost recording between The Futureheads and Bloc Party circa 2005. Angular, shouty, and very danceable, this little record packs a big punch. They [...]

• master PaN-PORNO B

The ID don't have a lot of information available about them. They don't really have their ID worked out like that. But here's what the band says about themselves... From an unusual international coalition The ID has members from Switzerland, Ireland and the UK who formed a musical union through their love of Joy Division. This fandom coupled with an appreciation of the artistic ideals of Dadaists, the I.D deliver their own slant on the post punk manifesto. Dramatic and angular, the band have embraced that post punk manifesto and [...]

Talk about cross cultural, multi-national, global get together's... Eva on the Western Castle Island pretty much define what it's all about. You see, Eva is a Malaysian/Chinese singer who has been singing as a professional in her homeland Malaysia. A few years ago she moved to Finland and started doing solo gigs. In spring 2011 she met Martin, Ilkka and Eero who were looking for a singer to their new band. Eva liked their melodic tunes and fresh sound and so they ended up doing music together. Their name is so long, that it couldn't even [...]

pacificUV was formed in the late 1990’s in Athens, Georgia. Half the band wanted to sound like a psychedelic Jesus and Mary Chain tripping on Nyquil, while the other half wanted to play one chord for 45 minutes to determine its color. Somehow, what emerged from these disparate goals was their critically acclaimed, 4 years in the making, self-titled debut album that Rolling Stone called a “masterpiece”. The perfect mixture of noise and melody, the first LP was a sprawling ambient landscape that revealed a myriad of influences, from shoegaze to 60’s rock, to slow core to post-rock. [...]

Self-professed psychedelic cavemen who pound out their primitive songs hastily in the garage, Thee American Revolution bathe fuzz drenched riffs and fill their debut album Buddha Electrostorm with gem upon gem of Elephant Six like songs. Robert Schneider’s (Apples in Stereo) pop smarts can’t be denied, and paired with Craig Morris, the duo conjure up a mighty tasty racket. Overseen by the mysterious direction of Wm. Shears, Thee American Revolution blaze ahead as if every song was made with cane sugar and was a number one single. Originally released on Garden [...]

The Silent League was formed in 2004 in Brooklyn by Justin Russo (then keyboardist for Mercury Rev during the classic Deserter's Songs/All is Dream era). File 13 released the band's debut album The Orchestra, Sadly, Has Refused in 2004 to worldwide acclaim. The Silent League has since appeared to be an on-again/off-again relationship between a collective of musicians interested only in periodically making records, playing shows, and disappearing again. This may be true as nobody in New York ever seems quite sure whether or not the band still exists. Their beautiful second album, [...]

Total Slacker , which is Brooklyn's Tucker Rountree, Emily Jane and Ross Condon, released their debut album Thrashin' overseas in England via Marshall Teller Records and Japan via Sixteen Tambourines earlier in the year. The trio is now gearing up for the album release in America in early 2012. With titles like, "No Mo 4loko", "Stuck In 93'" and "Shitty Baby", Total Slacker's music is more than a good ol' time, it's a relentless lifestyle. Lying somewhere between bad fuzzed out metal riffs and the Apples In Stereo on drugs, Total Slacker is [...]

Jon Wiley (guitar/vox), Steven Mertens (bass), and Chris Egan (drums) met when they toured with Adam Green as his touring band on the 2008 summer tour and Spacecamp was born. Later that year while in Berlin, the guys met Dev Hynes (better known as Lightspeed Champion or Blood Orange) where he asked the band to record nearly all of the music for Hynes' second album, Life is Sweet! Nice to Meet You. In January of 2009, the then named, Spacecamp and Hynes recorded the album at Brooklyn's Mission Sound with producer Ben Allen. Shortly [...]

The Phenomenal Handclap Band are best known for their single "15 to 20" - which exploded when the band first came on the scene two years ago. The group's debut album was a mix of cosmic disco-funk and psych soul that made for an incredible dance party and landed them a recent tour with Bryan Ferry. The group is also preparing the release of the follow-up to their acclaimed, self-titled debut album. Form & Control , PHB’s ambitious new work takes their clever fusion of international psych, soul, and cosmic disco a [...]

• Phenomenal Handclap Band - Following (special single version)

Johan from the rather amazing Swedish label, Labrador, has a tale to tell about the new band Det Vackra Livet. Rather than me ruining the story, here's the tale straight from Johan's errr...email. Philip called me up a day in September 2010. He was working on songs for the third The Mary Onettes album as far as I knew, so I was surprised to hear he had written two songs in Swedish that he wanted me to hear. He sent “Kristallen” and “Juni berättar” over … and I was instantly blown away of their verve and beauty! I [...]

• Det Vackra Livet - Askan

Alan Wilkis is a busy man. He works with a lot of people. Rather than trying to explain it all to you, I'll just let him do that. PRINTS is a series of singles by Brooklyn-based recording artist and producer, Alan Wilkis . For each song or “print,” he first writes an instrumental piece and then collaborates with a different vocalist, sometimes together in the studio and sometimes via the web, until the “print” takes its shape. By drawing both himself and his collaborators out of their respective comfort zones, Alan [...]

Niels Pederson and Adam Abildgaard have been playing music for a little over 5 years, but it was only about a year that they began to make music as Dempsey . They both went to high school together in Davis, California and until recently, both lived there (Adam moved to San Francisco about 6 months ago). After parting ways with the third member of their previous band Dempsey came into being with Niels and Adam continuing to make music but taking it in a completely different direction. After aimlessly making a [...]

Fuck Art, Let's Dance! is Romeo Sfendules (Guitar) and Tim Hansen (Drums) who operate as a highly motivated and brilliant team behind the dynamic, inspired and ridiculously young singer Nico. FUCK ART, LET’S DANCE! manage to create a make believe utopia of intense electronic beats and driving atmospheric guitars. A sugar rush of synthetics and beats, FALD are a rush of everything to the head all at once. One can't help but think of someone like Figure meeting Barcelona if they were German while trying to place where FALD are coming from. It's [...]

Trenchurian is Rian Trench from Dublin-based Solar Bears, whilst Swimming are Nottingham's finest purveyors of dark pop - a quintet fronted by John Sampson and his brother Peter. Swimming's single Neutron Wireless Crystal is out on 16 October, ahead of their debut album Ecstatics International on 7 November. Fans of Washed Out, Starslinger, Gold Panda, Baths and the like should be drawn to this in a pre-gazing, dream pop way. It's all shimmery with a slight 80's hue and is rather incredible and with names like [...]

French dance-pop purveyors Yelle returned with their long awaited second album, the exotically addictive Safari Disco Club , this past March. Adding depth and experience to the sweet & sour pop cocktail found on their acclaimed 2007 debut Pop-Up , Yelle found themselves in a more reflective mood and with a few new tricks up their sleeves. They kept busy, covering Robyn 's “Who's That Girl” as part of the iTunes international exchange, while Robyn covered their track “A Cause Des Garçons” in return. They were also were asked by Katy Perry to remix [...]