Just yesterday afternoon, all of us here in the editorial department were talking about Michael Jackson’s upcoming shows at the O2 Arena in London. The tone of the conversation skewed exactly as you may have guessed — rife with skepticism that the shows would actually come off, or wondering what they might look like if [...]

My music listening has been split between three artists the past month: the Neil Young Archives set (incredible; find the Riverboat performance of “Expecting to Fly” ASAP), Let’s Wrestle’s new one, coming next week (awesome awesome awesome); and Nite Jewel’s “Lover,” from her Good Evening record. The album kinda blows, but “Lover,” the album’s closer, [...]

I was listening to this Turkish psych comp on the subway this morning (like ya do), thinking about recent obsessions (the comp is called Obsession) and how I’d fallen woefully out of the loop these past few weeks away from the eMusic hivemind. I’d been spending most of my downtime doing crosswords, eating exotic/borderline gross [...]

Last month in honor of Mothers Day we took a look at some of the meanest moms in literature. Now it’s dad’s turn. Among this crop of nasty paternal figures is one extreme example of an overly-involved parent, a father who sells his wife and daughter off to the highest bidder, and, last but certainly [...]

So it would be disingenuous for me to write a post about the awesome Tic Tac Totally label without first mentioning that it was Alex who first brought it to my attention. I’ve been really, really, really into the return-to-garbage aesthetic that’s been creeping back across indie rock lately, and almost every album on Tic [...]

Nothin but good things to say about this – via Peter Eavis Just wanted to give a shoutout to one of my favorite new favorite tumblrs, Little Deaths. It’s basically structured like an old-fashioned mp3 blog: post one song, gab about it a little. As the owner of the tumblr writes: “A good song is [...]

Via Royal Scourge Nothing big today, but as always there’s good stuff to be had… Hatcham Social, You Dig The Tunnel, I’ll Hid the Soil – These guys’ Orange Juicy EP was a big hit with us last year, and this is their full-length. I haven’t listened to this before right this minute.  This guy [...]

As we come to the close of another week, we wanted to shine the light on a few records that may have fallen through the cracks — lovely, small albums that deserve a bit of spotlighting. They pretty much range across all genres, and the only thing they really share is that we like them [...]

Hey guys. So Monday morning from 10am – 11am, 17dots will be down for routine maintenance. We know that the timing on this is not the greatest, so we thought we’d warn you about it now. There’s a reason: As you’ve probably noticed, the site has been running more slowly due to the increased traffic. [...]

You might recognize Haven Kimmel from her ridiculously adorable baby photo, which became the cover of her mega-bestselling memoir, A Girl Named Zippy. She’s also written some incredible novels (The Solace of Leaving Early changed my life, truly) that reveal her wonderful contradictions. Haven is girlishly charming, but her writing is both worldly and thought-provoking. [...]

I don’t know how it took me almost two weeks to stumble across this but, man, am I glad I did. In this awesomely artless video, Frightened Rabbit‘s Scott Hutchison takes a breathless spin through Neutral Milk Hotel‘s awesome and underrated “Song Against Sex.” FRabbit have their own “song against sex,” of course, and its [...]

Orca, please So the biggest news in today’s new arrivals is undoubtedly the Dirty Projectors’ latest. Message board nerds have been hailing it as a major achievement ever since it leaked (two months ago). Of course, said message board nerds are now retreating on their claims, just in time for the other 98 percent of [...]

A deeply weird and haunting clusterfuck of an avant-garde record came into eMusic on Friday. It is filed under Jazz, but the only distant relation it bears to Jazz is the fact that it is completely improvised. Otherwise, it lays about thirty miles safely outside of any genre borders. It is called The Songs, and [...]

Rabbit fencing I had the somewhat disconcerting realization, when entering in my playlist for this week’s show, that basically all of my shows are the same, at least in shape. Start punky, get broody, dip into rap but segue away before I panic about losing anybody, than expand into utterly incomprehensible, “eh-whatever-let’s-play-this” randomness in the [...]

There are few things I love more than Kiwipop, especially Kiwipop of a certain vintage (I’m already scheming ways I can get to New Zealand for the one-off Chills reunion). Two years ago the Flying Nun Box Set was a constant on my iPod, and I generally scour record stores for the odd album by [...]

Quite the week for a lot of different reasons. There are some great new records to talk about this week, and I’m going to discuss them below. For Sony, note that both Cathy, head of communications here, and myself posted responses in this thread (mine is here). If we can direct conversation there and keep [...]

When Sony’s catalogue hits the site later this summer, what will you see? That’s the question the 17 Dots team has been working on, and I wanted to give everyone a peek at how we’re approaching this. The first thing to note is that, for better or worse, eMusic’s taste is the same. We’re finicky, [...]