I love everything about this. I hope that when I am in my 70s, I am doddering around my apartment in my Emperor shirt.

This week on East Village Radio I run through a number of recent hits added to the site, as well as some big, anticipated releases like M. Ward and Junior Boys. There’s some great stuff in here.
One thing I need to mention is that from now on, our show will only be streaming. EVR will [...]

With the recent arrival of hilarious books by Stephen Colbert and Amy Sedaris to eMusic, it’s a great time to dig into the audiobook archives and check out some humor titles. Click here! Humor is probably the most listenable category when it comes to audiobooks—funny books are instantly entertaining, and they don’t require intense, [...]

Dig deep enough and you’ll find some gems. That’s not my motto, but for now let’s pretend. Really though, there were some interesting things that came through this week, and so let’s run through a few.
Various Artists, Dirtybeatbreakinfunkandhiphop: Maybe the best album that’s been added to eMusic in 2009. I mean that. We came across [...]

File under: beautiful discoveries. I don’t know a whole lot about the band Hurray for the Riff Raff. I know that they’re from New Orleans and that this is their first record. More importantly, I know that their songs are beautiful, built from broke-down banjo and centered on Alynda Lee’s gorgeous, aching voice. It’s almost [...]

Photo by Fred Wilson
Last night the Rural Alberta Advantage made their US debut at Pianos in New York, and it was tremendous. The room was packed, everyone knew every word to every song, the energy was perfect, the band was completely overwhelmed. They couldn’t imagine it ever working out the way that it did.
The band [...]

This is just now coming across the wires, but Charlie Cooper, one of the two members of Telefon Tel Aviv, died on January 22nd. No cause of death has been given. Here’s what bandmate Joshua Eustis had to say in a statement:

Hello, Everyone.
It breaks my heart to inform you all that Charlie Cooper, my better [...]

Wanted to throw a little light on a New Arrival that I think is particularly special: Strand of Oaks, Leave Ruin. Strand of Oaks is one guy — Timothy Showalter — who writes gorgeous, folky songs shot through with loss and longing. His voice is the very sound of heartbreak — and with good reason: [...]

Nothing super big name today, but a bunch of little nuggets. Here’s a rundown of some of the notables and nice surprises new to the site this week.
Awesome Wells, The Highs and Lows of De Witt a Stanton: Surprise #1 and probably the most exciting one of today’s lot. “Hard to classify” gets thrown around [...]

Yesterday, Alex mentioned that Jed from My Teenage Stride had recorded a CD of songs “in the style of” certain popular artists. Conveniently, Jed had to swing by the eMusic offices today, so we asked (begged, cajoled, pleaded with) him to bring a copy of this CD along. Fortunately, he humored us. We have to [...]

From the (constantly amazing) Flickr of superbomba
This is my second stab at an EVR show and — oops! — it’s kind of a downer again. I wanted this one to skew a bit more “cold yet pretty,” so some clean electronic music, stark folk stuff… along those lines. I also would never normally include two [...]

Just wanted to do a quick post shouting out some new editorial I found especially interesting — hope you’ll feel the same.
1. I truly enjoyed Elisabeth Vincentelli’s fantastic User’s Guide to the catalog of black metal band Bathory. Even those scared off — both literally and figuratively — by Bathory’s awesome evil will find much [...]

Hello all! Allow me to disturb your reverie as you bask in the gentle cooing of Antony and Bon Iver (which one sounds more like a wounded pigeon, do you think?) to offer to you some really grimy East Coast hip hop no one’s ever heard of. Sound good?
Meet The Arkateks. I’ve never heard of [...]

There’s a lot going on at eMusic these days: a great new artists comp on the way, our friends Rural Alberta Advantage hitting New York City, a chance to talk to A.C. Newman. To that list we add one more exciting development: our friends (and the unofficial eMusic house band) My Teenage Stride will be [...]

Photo by Allison from the awesome Austin band Peel
Last week I asked for help in naming our upcoming eMusic Selects compilation (due February 10th!), a collection of songs from 16 different artists who we firmly believe are amazing and should become famous and rich and fabulously happy. Anyway, we have come upon a winning name, [...]

Remember a while ago when we asked you to send in questions for Dan Bejar and he answered them? Then, remember before that, when we asked you to do the same thing for Ted Leo? Well, we’re at it again — and this time we’re hitting up indie pop’s own personal Brill Building, A.C. Newman. [...]

You know we will gladly follow our eMusic Selects bands to the end of the earth, and so when they happen to pop into our backdoor, we are quintupletty excited. And so it is with the Rural Alberta Advantage’s first-ever US performance next Tuesday, January 27th, at Piano’s in NYC. I mean, the RAA? Live? [...]

We’ve been looking forward to this day for a very long time, and it was worth it. Oh, and some records came out, too! Andrew Bird, Bon Iver, Antony and the Johnsons and so many more. For those looking for Animal Collective, Telefon Tel Aviv or AC Newman, here’s the deal: AC goes up tomorrow; [...]

Photo by aremac
Obviously today’s most important new arrival will be taking a very public oath in about an hour. We’ll get to today’s big records — of which there are many, of course — after.

Hey there! Back from a vacation in Iceland and ready to tackle the New Year, this week’s EVR show is a fun and goofy one, with lots of amazing new music. Since EVR’s podcasting has been temporarily turned off, we’re hosting the show over at Mediafire. You can stream it here. Or you can right [...]