The Figurines‘ Skeleton is a wonderful indie-pop album. Now, I’m not saying that because there are a few good songs on it, but because it is in fact a wonderful album in a wholistic sense. From start to finish, Skeleton keeps you engaged, mixing things up between pulsing, up-tempo rhythms and more folky and relaxed jaunts. Both ends of the spectrum are held together by a deep respect for the hook that allows anybody to jump aboard and enjoy the fun without needing a degree in pretentioius hipsterology. However, the pop is almost always served up with interesting guitar-work that will help keep even the most jaded shoegazer interested. While I Remember is a decent enough track, many more polished diamonds are buried in the album proper. [Visit Shots Ring Out to read the rest...]

If I were to make some High Fidelity style “top 5 all time greatest bands” list there’s no way I’d put Calexico on there. At the same time, if you changed the wording in an ever-so-subtle fashion and asked me my “top 5 all time favorite bands” there’s no doubt Calexico will be standing proud in the winner’s circle. What does this mean? It means over time I have come to really fucking love Calexico. For whatever reason, Calexico has always just resonated with me. Perhaps it was being raised in inland southern California, which might as well be New Mexico. Perhaps I just like atmospheric and unabashedly culturally dichotomous jams. Perhaps Calexico’s sound just makes me want to a hop in an El Camino with no air condtioning and drive through the desert for no reason. [Visit the site to read the rest!]

Okay, another video. Sweden’s The Radio Dept . Why should you care?

Well, If you enjoy bittersweet Swedish pop you need to be all over them like Bravo jumps on a gay-firendly reality show. [Visit the site to read the rest!]

Back in late 2004/ early 2005 a lucky Amoeba whim turned me on to an LA-based band called 1984. As word got out they would go on to be compared to “Low-era” Bowie, Air, and Morrissey. Perhaps, perhaps… but I’ll put more stock into a description involving the words “cinematic” and “intricate”. Most recently the band changed their name, released a 2nd EP, lost their guitarist, and changed their name again, now known as Low vs. Diamond. Recently, the drummer (Howie Diamond) and I decided that Vodka on a boat was the order of the day, so we rented a small vessel, threw ourselves into the Pacific, and conversed: [Check out the site to read the rest!]

The Velvet Teen’s Out of the Fierce Parade was the soundtrack to my summer back in 2002. I saw them perform on a whim at the true Worst Venue Ever™ and it proved to be one of the most serendipitous whims I’ve ever had. Once frontman Judah Nagler stepped behind his keyboard and let his falsetto-paradise voice loose on Caspian Can Wait, I was sold. Merch was purchased. Praise was given. Pitchfork giving the album an ridiculously low score sealed the deal: this band was great in a way that different than what the indie-nazis had deemed was cool at the time. Score.

This video has been floating around for a few weeks YouTube style, but we still figured you kids want some downloadable goodness. So check it out again, download it for the first time, or just wait until Videoteque rips us offDerek, Ben: Holla at ya’ boy!. Whatever.

Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s are absolutely obsessed with cats. In fact, a ghost holding a red pussy cat introduced me to the band in the first place, so I should have known right then. The chorus for the song Paper Kitten Nightmare is “meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow” which is promptly followed by French murmuring. I am not fucking joking. Even more crazy is that it’s a damn fine track. Overall the band is defined by a reserved energy, coming across as if they are at all times planning to assault you, but they change their mind at the last moment, sigh, and play some horns and violins. Some electric guitar swagger does seep out occasionally, as in the current track of video focus Quiet as a Mouse, but most of the time it’s shyness and foot shuffles. In the end, distinguished music critics agree: they sound chill.

Daedelus is the father of Icarus. As in flying too close to the sun because he’s a moron Icarus. As in KId Icarus Icarus. Fuck yeah. Remember how you would spend the whole day fighting eggplant wizards and shit and then at the end you finally got the cool mirror shield and the wings that actually work and the cialis-powered arrows and you flew to Medusa’s head and just let loose on her face? I’m pretty sure that everything I learned about sex I learned from Kid Icarus.

Everything I learned about eclectic, trippy, and brooding electronic sounds on the other hand, I learned from Daedelus of the non-Icarus fathering variety. Than man behind the plan, Alfred-Weisberg-Roberts, known to play in bands Adventure Time and The Long Lost, is a fiend when it comes to electronic production. His tracks run the gamut, the serene to the surreal, the brooding to the booty-shaking. Sometimes you get MF DOOM laying down, other times you get haunting melodies that scratch at you very center until you feel unsettled, yet accepting. Sundown, from his latest Denies the Day’s Demise, is of the latter variety.

You should listen to Justin Roelofs because he used to be in the band the Anniversary until he fucked the Keyboardist which caused their label to drop them, and they thus broke up. So right there you guys should be on board because the man’s dick has power… the power to change lives. It’s a story worth telling, so I’ll tell it.