Every now and then, the internet turns up something truly strange, rare and special. To wit: the Daily Swarm recently posted a handful of cassette (!) bootlegs of shows in Minneapolis in the 1980s. Among them: a Replacements show commenters are dating to 1986, and a PiL show they’re dating to 1982. Burn out the [...]

We’ve been talking a lot about the new Adele record, which will be out a week from today. It’s a bold step up: passionate, fiery, determined, heartwrenching. I had a chance to talk to Adele last week, and she walked me through some of the album’s more potent songs. We’ll be posting this on the [...]

Well, I thought it couldn’t get any weirder than Arcade Fire winning a Grammy (TM!) and then it did. Naughty By Nature did a Daytrotter session.

On February 22, eMusic Selects alum Julianna Barwick will release The Magic Place through Asthmatic Kitty. It takes all of the elements that make Barwick so special and enhances them: strange, ethereal, transfixing and spooky. You can see what we mean a week early: take a listen to the NPR stream below, then pick it [...]

I was somewhat alone in my aggressive championing of Yeasayer‘s ODD BLOOD, but that was fine by me. I thought the record was charming and vulnerable, and it keeps on giving even this long after its release. Watch the fantastically bizarre video for the heartbreaking “I Remember” above.

Our eMusic Selects alum Strand of Oaks has been on quite the roll lately! He fully-funded his Kickstarter project for a physical release of the awesome Pope Kildragon (cannot wait for that vinyl to land on my desk!) he’s been generating a steady internet buzz, and he’ll officially be performing at South by Southwest. He’s [...]

In the midst of a whole lot of madness last week, the James Blake record arrived on eMusic U.S. From what I understand, it’s pretty divisive! Some people really like it, some people think it’s watering down dubstep. These are real controversies! Amazing! We live in thrilling times. You can be the judge yourself. And [...]

Remember years ago when the Flaming Lips released Zaireeka, four (I think) CD’s designed to be played on four different synced-up CD players? Well, the Flips have taken that concept into a new era. Starting today, if you go to their YouTube page, you’ll find Two Blobs Fucking — a series of videos meant for [...]

On April 5, everyone’s favorite ’50s shoegaze outfit The Raveonettes will release the awesomely-titled Raven in the Grave, which frontmane Sune Rose Wagner says is their first album that “doesn’t have any sunshine.” So I guess the other records weren’t dark? That means this one is going to be straight-up terrifying. Get an early listen [...]

Wow! Crazy morning! Arcade Fire are Grammy winners! There’s a new Radiohead album coming out this weekend that I am having trouble pre-ordering! I have a headache! The weather is really nice! I think I got banned from Twitter! I need some time to get my bearings! So let’s all get it together with this [...]

PJ Harvey Let England Shake [Vagrant] Release Date: 15 February By J. Edward Keyes The ghosts of Polly Harvey’s half-remembered childhood come seeping through the floorboards on Let England Shake — snatches of songs that would have played over battered transistors as she was hitting adolescence in the rural British town of Dorset, ghostly images [...]

Hey! It’s Panda Bear! It’s been a long time since the beloved Person Pitch, but dude is not gonna make you wait much longer. On April 12 he’ll release Tomboy, which finds him straddling the psych and pop universes with as much bizarro skill and depth as ever. Want an indication of just how that’s [...]

Bright Eyes The People’s Key [Saddle Creek] Release Date: 15 February By: Amanda Petrusich Conor Oberst was just 22 when Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground turned Bright Eyes into something of a mainstream band (and Oberst into an inadvertent ambassador for emo, then a new and [...]

Greg Dulli has been mining the darker recesses of desire and lust ever since his days with the Afghan Whigs (to call them ‘seminal’ would be to risk a bad pun). Though his sonic assault has been tempered over the years, the impact is no less devastating. The masterful Saturnalia, the record he made with [...]

Sin Fang – Because Of The Blood from Máni M. Sigfússon on Vimeo. eMusic loves Iceland, and a whole lot of you got real, real, real into that last Sin Fang Bous record. Well, have we got good news for you: they’re back, except they’ve shortened their name. Now they’re just Sin Fang, but everything [...]

Super Wild Horses, “Fifteen” from mystic fontana on Vimeo. Yesterday, we got a little nuts about our love for the HoZac label. Today, that love continues: Last year, HoZac released one of the best records you didn’t hear, the gnarled, gnarly Fifteen by Super Wild Horses. Imagine if Tanya Donnelly decided to abandon all her [...]

I’ve been a music buyer for the last 20 or so years of my life. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that, no matter how old I get, it’s not a habit I’m going to shake. I expect I’ll be hauling boxes of records with me to the nursing home and bitching if their turntable [...]

The rate at which bands come out of nowhere and dominate blog headlines has spiked sharply over the course of the last few years. If Andy Warhol were alive today, he’d probably consider 15 minutes generous. He’d probably even consider 15 seconds generous. So much more remarkable, then, when a band like Braids starts with [...]

We’ve been teasing it for the last few days, and today, we reveal it in full: musical memories from artists far and wide. Find out which artist crushed out to R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly,” who got heartsick to the sounds of Paul Westerberg’s “Dyslexic Heart” and which two artists look back fondly, [...]