Austra and Ital are both feel-good stories about the nice things that can happen when punks pick up computers. Austra’s frontwoman Katie Stelmanis was a shining light of Toronto’s art-punk scene for years before she put together her icy electro-goth group, and Daniel Martin-McCormick spent time in the great percussive skree bands Black Eyes and [...]
The members of the National are gracefully-aging Midwestern-transplanted New Yorkers who wear suits a lot, and the same is also true of David Letterman. They’re a natural fit for one another. Today, the National release their grand and confident new album Trouble Will Find Me. And last night, they came through Letterman’s show, playing a [...]
We can argue about the musical and cultural value of the Doors, but it would be straight-up inaccurate to classify them as anything less than one of America’s truly legendary rock groups. And I think it’s fair to say, too, that Ray Manzarek was as essential to the Doors’ success as Jim Morrison, maybe more [...]
Following up his 2011 EP Gabriel, Joe Goddard of Hot Chip is slated to put out a follow-up called Taking Over some time this year. Its first offering is “She Burns” featuring English singer Mara Carlyle. Their union is an interesting one, as Carlyle is famous for her use of ukelele and a musical saw, [...]
Last June, we published a feature called the Top 20 Albums We’ve Been Waiting For Forever, counting down a bunch of our favorite artists from whom a new full-length was: (A) long overdue; and (B) not totally unrealistic. Coming in at No. 19 on that list was Queens Of The Stone Age. As we wrote [...]
The London production duo Mount Kimbie came up making evocative post-dubstep dance music around the same time as James Blake, and there seems to be a pretty good chance that their long-awaited new album Cold Spring Fault Less Youth, their first for a bigger label, could push them into Blake’s cultural circles. Whether or not [...]
The former Double Dagger drummer Denny Bowen now leads Roomrunner, a Baltimore band whose fuzz-drenched attack brings back the moment before Gap commercial directors figured out what grunge was. Ideal Cities, their debut album, is a big, messy, joyous guitar-assault. If your faith in effects pedals needs reaffirming, this should do the trick. We posted [...]
Well, this is pretty dope. Rookie has commissioned a theme song for the month of May, and it’s badass both in theory and in execution. Waxahatchee leader Katie Crutchfield and her twin sister, Swearin’ leader Allison have recorded a punked-up cover of a song that never exactly screamed for a punked-up cover: Grimes’ ethereal burble [...]
The great Queens rap redbeard Action Bronson is working on a full-length mixtape with the New York producer Harry Fraud, and the pair let one go earlier this year when they posted “Strictly 4 My Jeeps” online. In the track’s brand-new video, from director Jason Goldwatch, Bronson takes us to a cartoonish Queens universe and [...]
Young Wonder is an electro-pop duo from Cork, Ireland who have a mastery for crafting lush, skittering soundscapes. “Electrified” combines big, bright synths and features lead singer Rachel Koeman’s hitting the hook’s high notes while harmonizing with monster-sound vocal distortion. Its video was directed by fellow Irishmen, Brendan Canty and Conal Thomson of the art [...]
