Every month, I post my 5 favorite videos that we’ve featured on Seen Your Video (our music video-obsessed sister blog). May happened to be an outstanding month for music videos, making it difficult to narrow it down to just five (make sure to check out the HM’s also). Topping the list, we have a dark, [...]
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Top Music Videos of May ’12 (via SeenYourVideo.com)
Listen: Beat Connection – The Palace Garden, 4AM
Seattle is famous for it’s alt-rock and folk scenes, but not typically electro-pop, so it’s a pleasant surprise to find such an exciting and promising band like Beat Connection come out of the fair northwestern city. The band will release their debut LP, Palace Garden next month on Moshi Moshi Records, and if first single “The [...]
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Summer (Or What It Sounds Like) Vol. 3
(photo by gege.gatt) After taking its sweet time last year, summer has struck back with a vengeance. At least here in the midwest, 90+ degree temperatures and clear, sunny skies are quickly becoming the norm. Of course, with summertime not only comes trips to the beach and increased slushie sales but exuberant, feel-good summer jams. As is [...]
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MP3: Father John Misty – Nancy From Now On
You’d think a person would be crazy to leave a gig in Fleet Foxes especially after a milestone record like Helplessness Blues, but that’s exactly what J. Tillman did to focus on his solo career. He’s no stranger to the solo game with seven albums under his own name, but for his latest, Fear Fun, [...]
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Five Albums You Should Be Listening To Right Now
Editor’s Note: Matt (on behalf of musicforants.com) contributed this post to Nerve.com’s Five Albums series this week. Check out his list / remarks below! Allo Darlin’ – Europe At first, Allo Darlin’ seem like any number of cloying indie-pop bands, good for a few spins until the next identical thing comes along to fill the [...]
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MP3: Fang Island – Asunder
Offering further evidence that 2012 is shaping up to be the best year for guitar-based rock music in a some time, party rockers Fang Island will be releasing their sophomore album this July, and if first single “Asunder” is any indication, it should be an absolute barnburner. The new track is a relentless assault of [...]
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The Kids Are Alright (Children’s Choir Mix)
Whether it’s Radiohead, Justice or Kanye West, lots of artists have used children’s choirs in their music and it can have the effect of sounding uplifting, cute, anthemic or just plain creepy. The Langley Schools Music Project album, Innocence & Despair showed that’s even possible to maintain the concept for an entire album and still [...]
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MP3: New Beard – Doom
Ben Wigler, former frontman of Arizona (a band who I’ve raved about quite a bit on here), has returned with New Beard, a Brooklyn-based quartet whose expertise includes awesome music and facial hair. The first single on their debut LP, New Beard City, is a well-crafted, refreshing track called “Doom”. The track begins all strings, handclaps [...]
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M83 / I Break Horses @ The Pageant (5/2)
After releasing the phenomenal double-album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming last year, M83 were high on my bands-to-see list and their tour with recent faves of mine I Break Horses made this show an absolute must. To things even more enticing, the bands were playing The Pageant in St. Louis, a beautiful venue which is quickly becoming [...]
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Top Music Videos of April ’12 (via SeenYourVideo.com)
Every month, I post my 5 favorite videos that we’ve featured on Seen Your Video (our music video-obsessed sister blog). Topping our list in April, we have some adorable kids in face paint, stylized new-wave animation, two women running ominously in a field, a reverse-video with a twist, and maybe the weirdest party you’ll ever witness. [...]
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MP3: Suckers – Figure It Out
A lot of great albums have been coming out (or leaking) recently, so it took me a while to listen to Suckers latest LP, which is unfortunate, because Candy Salad is an extremely solid sophomore album for the whimsical Brooklyn group. The highlight for me is “Figure It Out” (named after this, I can only [...]
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The Beach Boys – 25 Essential Tracks
I’ve been listening to the Beach Boys longer than any other band. Their greatest hits compilation was one of the first CDs I ever owned and I had the whole album memorized backwards-and-forwards. So it’s no exaggeration to say the California surf-rockers are near and dear to my heart. The band are having a huge [...]
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Hundred Waters
On their self-titled debut album, Hundred Waters perform the rare feat of making songs that are both incredibly melodic and challenging. I’ve seen them described as “folktronica” a few times, but I think “experimental pop” is a better descriptor of band’s playful use of rippling synths, syncopated drums, inventive harmonies and electronic flourishes. ”Me & Anodyne” and “Boreal” [...]
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MP3: Maps & Atlases – Winter
I’ve been following Chicago’s Maps & Atlases casually for a number of years (they put on a hell of a live show), but even still, their lastest album Beware and Be Grateful snuck up and completely took me surprise. The band has always been very skilled in the technical arena, with their noodling math-rock guitar lines [...]
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Gaming the System: Soundsupply
Soundsupply Drop 2 from Soundsupply on Vimeo. We previously wrote about Soundsupply a few months ago, but with the release of the second bunch of albums we thought it was something worth revisiting in more detail. Over the past two years, the bundle model has become a viable distribution channel in the world of games. [...]
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MP3: Brendan Losch – Son of a Gun
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Artist:
Brendan Losch is a Chicago-based folk singer/songwriter who also runs the music blog, Count Me Out. He released a new album this week called Low and I’ve been digging it quite a bit, especially first single “Son of a Gun”. It’s a very enduring little tune that features some exquisite, jangly acoustic guitar among stomping [...]
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Cover Songs (that are included on a proper album) Mix
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Artist:
Most of the time when an artist covers a song, they’ll release it as a single, b-side, EP, live performance, or as a part of a compilation or covers album. On the rare occasion though, artists will include a cover in the tracklisting of one of their proper albums, which usually signifies that they’ve put more thought [...]
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MP3: Grouplove – Tongue Tied
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Artist:
I’ll be heading to Bonnaroo for the first time this year, and in preparation, I’m checking out some of the bands on the lineup that are new to me. My favorite so far is L.A. indie pop band, Grouplove. Somehow despite being in an iPod commercial last year, I missed out on the incredibly effervescent [...]
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MP3: The Raveonettes – Into The Night
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Artist:
Danish indie-pop duo The Raveonettes tend to release a new album/EP every year or two so it’s easy to take them for granted, but don’t sleep on “Into The Night”, the title track to their upcoming EP. The track doesn’t stray from the band’s tried-and-true noise pop sound, huge, fuzzed-out guitar riffs and Sune Rose [...]
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Francisco The Man
Francisco The Man play a type of sunny, post-punk guitar rock that’s all been all but absent from the indie rock scene since the early/mid-2000′s when bands like French Kicks, Rogue Wave, Snowden and SOUND Team were all the rage. The Los Angeles-based band entered my radar through the guys at I Guess I’m Floating [...]
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