I caught Truckasaurus opening for Apparat at Neumos in Seattle at the end of May. I wasn’t paying much attention at first, but then I noticed they were armed with Game Boys and projectors and it piqued my interest. They sounded a bit like a lo-fi Modeselektor, and they were actually more entertaining [...]

Not sure when exactly this site popped up, but label guy/17 dotter Patrick just fowarded it on to me yesterday. It’s a simple, fun concept that should bring a twinkle to the eye of any music nerd (or music nerd dater). I’ll let ‘em explain themselves:
They were into you, so they made you a [...]

Hey everyone! I just got back from a weekend trip home to Virginia (my mom graduated college — yay mom!), where I came bearing a huge haul of vinyl for my 17-year-old brother Stephen (a 17 Dots reader — hi bro!)(and just to embarrass him a lil bit, that’s him in the pic above) that, [...]

Amazing! Just a week or two after I mentioned it on 17 Dots as a comparison to Parson Sound, Hawkwind’s absolutely incredible Space Ritual Vol. 2 hit the site today, and anyone with any level of interest in metal, drone or just amazingly weird sounds would be wise to pick this up. This is a [...]

Ladyhawke is my most recent musical crush – I’ve known and loved her for about a week. After Friday’s disappointing through-a-window-darkly Ladyhawke experience, I was determined to see her properly, even though that meant squishing into the painfully overcrowded Cubana - crutches, gammy ankle and all. Ladyhawke, aka New Zealander Pip Brown, sounds like a [...]

The only bad thing about Let’s Wrestle is that they make it impossible to listen to anything else. There’s catchy and then there’s catchy, and somehow these three London boys have invented a whole new CATCHY that scientists worldwide are currently devoting resources to cure. If you think I’m joking you obviously haven’t listened. Yet.
Let’s [...]

I’ve been a little harsh towards Tangerine Dream in the past: “stupid hippy nonesense” would be one the politer phrases I’ve used to describe them. However, in conversation today with my Secret Krautrock Source I was informed that not only had two hard-to-find krautrock classics arrived on eMusic, but they were by Tangerine Dream and [...]

Some stories are so vibrant, so dramatic, so engrossing, that they just seem made to be read aloud. Luckily for us, it turns out that the archives of McSweeney’s are filled with tons of such stories. So when the indie publisher mailed a microphone to five of its most audacious writers to record pieces for [...]

So, ironically, after SXSW where I saw about 100 bands in four days, I’m not really sure what to listen to, and I’d love some help. I’m really liking the Ponytail record, but that’s so mood-specific; the She & Him is strong, but I think I’ve already listened to it too much; and I really [...]

It isn’t often a major band and their record company decide not to tell anybody about a forthcoming album until a week before it’s due to be released, so I was surprised to say the least when one of eMusic’s bigger labels informed me that was exactly what they’d done. Have I heard it? No, [...]

The blog Dead Flowers has posted a Velvet Underground live recording from 1967 that contains the first-ever performance of “Sister Ray,” as well as a previously unheard (and great) song called “I’m Not a Young Man Anymore.” I dunno the legality of the thing — it all seems to have originated in this eBay listing [...]

The music policy in the eMusic Europe office is usually dictated by whoever gets to the stereo first (and it’s right by my chair, so I have a natural advantage here) but when we can’t agree on anything we listen to FIP.
FIP is a French radio station, based in Paris (the initials stand for [...]

Valentine’s Day! Yikes! Here’s a little bit of electro pop if you’re feeling a little bit lovelorn on this Hallmark Holiday.

I have a somewhat troubling soft spot for the young, scruffy UK indie guitar bands that are sprouting up three-a-day on Myspace these days. The blueprint tends to be: “Take Me Out” indie-disco drumbeat, trebly guitars and bangs for days. There will usually be a few fun dancealong singles, Erol Alkan will book [...]

When I first heard Lio’s ‘Housewife of the Year’ I thought about a future where robots would do all of our menial chores and decided this would be the listening of choice for your AI-enhanced Domestibot XR4. It’s a rushing piece of 1980s electro-pop, with truly deluded vocals from a cute, but unreliable narrator. And [...]

A new season of Radiolab recently started on WNYC and the first podcast is fairly amazing.
The description for the episode is:
Imagine that you’re a composer. Imagine getting this commission: “Please write us a song that will allow family members to face the death of a loved one…” Well, composer David Lang had to do just [...]

Electric Turn To Me are not a band for everyday listening. They are difficult and inclined to witchy hysteria and fracture the spectrum into 356 shades of black and grey. Pitchfork hate them. I’m happy, if happy is the correct word, to have found them.

Thanks yet again goes to the Fader blog for uncovering this treasure: Kutiman, an Israeli R&B producer, and a singer named Karolina busting out this absolutely sick soul jam, “Music Is Ruling My World.” Best of all? It’s on eMusic. Download the album here, or the single with several remixes here. Iz hot!

In today’s additions, do not overlook Coptic Light, whose 2005 self-titled record is a modern math-rock classic, and at a bargain price of three tracks (in 45 minutes) to boot. Coptic Light were — they are no more — members of Storm & Stress (a Don Cab offshoot), Antioch Arrow (such a great goddamn band) [...]

This is the week for great new upcoming releases, apparently. Following up Atlas Sound, here’s another called Scary Mansions, which is a Brooklyn woman singing songs that to me sound like if Sparklehorse were a lady. Cat Power, too. But she’s already a lady. Anyway, above is a really great little apartment performance that’s powerful, [...]