“Hey There Delilah” is never going to sound as great as it did the first time I heard it, hollered passionately and meaningfully by several thousand teenagers at the Theater at Madison Square Garden.

The other day I was talking with a classical music fan and I asked if he downloaded music. No, classical music, with its vast dynamic range, didn’t go well with walking down noisy city streets or riding the subway. He preferred to listen to music at home, and didn’t have an MP3 player hooked up [...]

Can you picture mouse-like aliens, made of pink wool, calling to one another with swannee whistle voices? If you grew up in the United Kingdom the above will have you swooning with nostalgia; if you didn’t I’ve probably lost you by now. I grew up in the UK and know these aliens as The Clangers. [...]

Loudon Wainwright III gets knocked up, a new EP from Kelley Polar and some alt-country names pay tribute to the Clash’s Sandinista!.

A light Tuesday, but a big release for classical fans in the form of Joan Tower’s Made in America.

Do you love elephants? I sure do. So I was pretty excited when eMusic got the album Thai Elephant Orchestra: recordings of music by pachyderms. Inspired by artists Komar and Melamid, who did paintings with these same multi-talented creatures, downtown NYC composer and violin ace Dave Soldier, and his collaborator, elephant conservationist Richard Lair of [...]

The principle that guides my daily trawl through New Arrivals is a combination of name recognition and cover art intrigue. It was the latter that lead me to download Watts Happening, an odd record by an unknown named Don Adams.

Another great music video for ya’ll, this one from the Willowz, on Dim Mak. The song is called “Evil Son,” and it’s from their new album, Chautauqua. Take a gander:

An indie-pop surprise, and some great old-school hip-hop classics.

01 I generally view the Pickin’ On series as the music industry at its worst: piggybacking with kitschy covers meant to dupe unsuspecting folks into downloading something they don’t really want. I resent the whole concept, and always have. Well, today I eat a slight bit of crow as — surprise of all surprises — [...]

Rejected cover to latest Boards of Canada album.
An eagle-eyed eMusic user pointed out a stunning new arrival on the message boards yesterday and I couldn’t be happier that they did. Like most of the staff at the site, I scour the new arrivals pages each day, looking for inspiration and hoping for surprise additions to [...]

Few things provoke more nervous laughter in pop music than the announcement that a one-time visionary has crafter a “return-to-form” album. That’s mostly because the term gets grossly misapplied. By my count, each of Bowie’s last four albums has been a “return to form,” and ditto for Elvis Costello. And what about that Stooges [...]

The new album from Strategy, Future Rock, is one of the nicest discoveries I’ve made checking freshly ripped in a very long time. Strategy is a Portland dude named Paul Dickow, and musically he favors dub, ambient and some elements of post-punk (chiefly its blending of art-rock and dub), and Future Rock amalgamates that fandom [...]

Today is National the National Day, and we couldn’t be prouder to host it. It’s an essential for the indie rock set. But there’s lots more to recommend today, including a great compilation of New Zealand rock, Tim Armstrong, Parts & Labor, Wheat and the Gourds discography.

At some point yesterday the Makasound label arrived on site. I know that today is going to be a download-taxer, what with the National and Parts & Labor and Wheat, but I’d urge you to set a few aside downloads to sample Makasound. Here’s why:

Seems like it’s been a while since we’ve had a new arrival worth raving about, but a new album from Colleen and a stellar rockabilly collection from Eddie Bond have put us back on track.

Every month at eMusic we ask twelve different genre experts to pontificate about their particular area of interest. From Alt/Punk to Spiritual, these writers cover it all. Unfortunately, due to space limitations, sometimes we don’t have time to feature all of it. As such, something like Kevin Whitehead’s informed take on the jazz harp (!) [...]

Speaking of advance albums, we also got Devin Townsend’s latest Metal meets Muppets concept album Ziltoid the Omniscient in today. With a storyline straight out of a Douglas Adams novel (Ziltoid the Omniscient battles Captain Spectacular cross-dimensionally when Earth can’t provide a decent cup of joe) and some of the most crisp production I [...]

Today on site is an advance of the new record by the German group Kammerflimmer Kollektief, who I’ve been semi-obsessed with since they released the odd, ethereal Hysteria in 2004. Jinx finds the group again maximizing their strengths, writing songs full of strange shadows and shrieks.

Last night, Chapel Hill’s Southern Culture On The Skids made yet another pit stop at the Mercury Lounge located here in the ol’ eMusic barrio. This time out was in support of their outstanding covers album “Countrypolitan Favorites”.