Mike Bloom » Here We Go Magic "How Do I Know" from The Voice Project on Vimeo . The internet sometimes reminds me that I have friends in far away places and that I'm really no good at keeping up with them. But sometimes they will nudge me. This was a nice nudge. I came across an awesome Voice Project session featuring Mike Bloom covering one of my favourite songs of the year, "How Do I Know" by Here We Go Magic. My friend Hunter runs the Voice Project and is consistently pumping [...]

Thursday things: ► Black Star, the groundbreaking duo of Mos Def and Talib Kweli, do a makeup gig at Club Nokia for an L.A. date originally scheduled in October. ► The first night of the annual Invisible Children benefit concerts at the Troubadour features Jon Foreman (Switchfoot), Matt Pryor (the Get Up Kids), Aaron Gillespie (the Almost), Aaron Weiss (mewithoutYou), Ryan O'Neal (Sleeping At Last). ► John C. Reilly celebrates the release of two singles (one with Becky Stark, one with Tom Brosseau) on Jack White's Third Man Records by [...]
Too much Tuesday: ► Canadian hardcore punks F*cked Up , their new album "David Comes to Life" (out in June) getting a lot of deserved accolades, visit the El Rey Theatre, with L.A.'s own Fidlar and Sacramento's Trash Talk opening. That's F*cked Up's video for "Queens of Hearts," above. ► WU LYF , the Manchester up-and-comers whose debut "Go Tell Fire to the Mountain" earned plaudits from Pitchfork and more, make their L.A. debut at the Echo, where Crystal Antlers, fresh off a banging residency, support. ► The final night of the [...]
Tonight's touts: ► Portland rockers Portugal. The Man are doing it right on the day their new album "In the Mountain in the Cloud" is released. They're on KCRW this morning, and do two shows later, a 4:30 p.m. acoustic set and a cozy show at El Cid (both of which will be webcast on UStream ). Entry into the El Cid show is free with proof of purchase of the new album. Meanwhile, that's the video for the new song "Got It All (Can't Be Living Now)," above. ► Shadow [...]

Like his Rilo Kiley bandmates, bassist Pierre de Reeder has stayed busy since the L.A. indie-rockers last released an album in 2007. To inventory: Jenny Lewis has released a solo album, and then last year's "I'm Having Fun Now" with Jenny & Johnny; Blake Sennett emerged this year with new Elected album, "Bury Me in My Rings;" and Jason Boesel unveiled his solo record "Hustler's Son" in 2010. De Reeder's solo album "The Way That It Was" came out in 2008, and since he built and operated a recording studio that has hosted the likes of [...]
Here are The Wheel’s Still In Spin’s suggested new releases for this week. City and Colour – Little Hell. Download “Fragile Bird” (mp3). Dallas Green, who records his own music under the name City and Colour, is the guitarist of the post-hardcore band Alexisonfire. This, his third City and Colour album, is another set of folk-based songs with catchy, lilting vocals. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. – It’s a Corporate World. Download “Skeletons” (mp3). The debut album from this Detroit duo is full of addictively catchy melodies and purely pleasurable music. The band’s [...]
Mike Bloom - L.A. singer/songwriter/multi-instru mentalist and co-founder of The Elected with Blake Sennett (Rilo Kiley) offers up a fine, beautifully understated debut solo album...the project received initial funding from actor Tobey Maguire... // Release : King of Circles (June 7, Little Record Company) // Sounds like : Bloom produced, mixed, wrote and provided instrumental backing on all of the songs, lending the album an exceptionally personal stamp...at the center of most tracks are simply acoustic guitar -- though Bloom's skilled fingerpicking is hardly simple -- and vocals with additional instruments fleshing [...]

So the story goes that Blake Sennett was retired from music, his baggage heavy from a decade's worth of work with Rilo Kiley and two albums of material from his own band the Elected . A friend got him off the schneid, back in the studio, and, boom, we have "Bury Me in My Rings" (out Tuesday), the Elected's third album. Made with the Elected's co-founder Mike Bloom (who, keeping it in the Rilo Kiley family, has his own solo album coming out in June on Pierre de Reeder's new label Little Record Co.) and producer/multi-instrumentalist Mike [...]