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Van She. Amazing. I found the Sydney, Australia band through Last.fm’s “similar artists” feature and a few weeks ago when I was in LA I visited the infamous Amoeba Records, who had a copy of the band’s self-titled EP for only $4 (used!). I promptly snatched it up and have been listening to it incessantly ever since, especially the song Kelly, which I urge you to listen to, STAT. It’s a beautiful, new wave-inspired love song that just tickles you in a special way. A repeat listen for sure.

Their record label describes them as “fresher than Flavor Flav, fresh like coriander, fresher than the Fresh Prince.” I can guarantee you right now that they taste wayyy fresher than coriander, cuz coriander doesn’t taste fresh at ALL. Poor choice of description, Modular.

Van She have a questionably useful (but nonethless cool!) feature on their official site lets you ‘erase’ parts of the content with a drag of the mouse.

Their debut album V came out on Modular Recordings in Australia (also home to fellow Australians The Presets and my favourites, Cut Copy) on August 9 and it’s currently making the rounds on the internet. Hopefully it won’t be months and months (or years?!) before North America sees a hard copy release or some tour dates as was the case with Cut Copy.

Watch Video: Van She - Kelly

Links:
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/vanshe
Official Site: http://www.vanshe.com

You guys know what an earworm is, right? It’s a song that gets stuck in your head in no time, whether you like it or not. The song can be a guilty pleasure (like Hinder’s Lips Of An Angel) or something that will make you the early adopter envy of your friends (Ratatat’s Bird Priest). Either way though, the song’s legitimately cool.

So my friend Geoff, ever the tastemaker, turned me on to this band called Ra Ra Riot earlier this week and you’d think he worked for Barsuk Records, their new label, cause the band’s debut album is being released next week on August 19. Very timely.

And here’s where we get to this week’s earworm. I’m absolutely addicted to the song A Manner To Act (RAC Remix), which you can hear on Ra Ra Riot’s MySpace page. It’s a snappy gem of a song. Not sure what the original sounds like (and it won’t be on the band’s upcoming album), but the remix is wicked.

Ra Ra Riot are from Syracuse, New York and have already played with the likes of Art Brut and Editors, and they’re masters of two of indie rock’s tastemaker festivals - CMJ and SXSW (twice!).

Rhumb Line is out on August 19!

Canadian Tour Dates:
September 3 @ Lambi, Montreal
September 4 @ Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto
September 21 @ Media Club, Vancouver

Links:
MySpace: Ra Ra Riot
Official Site: Ra Ra Riot

Girl Talk, aka 26 year-old Pittsburgh native Greg Gillis, has a new album called Feed The Animals out and at the moment it’s only available on a “pay-what-you-like” basis via his label, Illegal Art. Or you can pay $10 to receive a hard copy of the album when it has a physical release on September 23.

Back to the PWYW model though - in this instance, users that choose to pay nothing to acquire the music have to explain why, selecting “I may donate later”, “I can’t afford to pay”, “I don’t believe in paying for music”, “I don’t value music made from sampling”, etc. as their reasoning.

Girl Talk specializes in sample-based remixes and mashups - he plucks elements from at least a dozen existing songs, from old to new, to create a “new” song. In any given song you might hear an excerpt of Lil Mama, LL Cool J, Lily Allen, whoever. Songs that have been out for 20 years and others that haven’t even been released as proper singles yet.

This is Girl Talk’s fourth album and I love that he’s (thus far) adhered to a solid schedule of releasing an album every even-numbered year since 2002. Extra points for consistency.

Warning: the album is highly infectious. Everyone knows that one of the hallmarks of a great DJ is playing a healthy combination of songs people know interspersed with new or more obscure stuff that no one’s heard of. Do too much of the latter, and you’ll lose everyone’s attention. And if you have a short attention span (really, who doesn’t?) you’ll adore this album even more…just when you’re aching for a change in melody, the song switches. It’s hard to tell when one song ends and another ends - there are just TOO many good combos on this album.

It’s a trip down nostalgia lane for sure - every 20 seconds you’ll hear yourself exclaim “hey, I totally know this song!” (wouldn’t it be a fun exercise to try to guess them all?? Plus, it really drives you to go research some of the songs you’ve heard snippets of to hear more!

As a bonus, Wikipedia just happens to have a breakdown of the over 350 songs used on the album’s 14 tracks.

Links:
MySpace: Girl Talk

Last night I was lounging with some good friends, listening to new music, and a song came on that stunned me with its beauty. My friend told me it was a band called The Receiver. For the next forty minutes I was treated to an aural explosion of layered vocals and beats - truly a thing of beauty - and I had to learn more.

The Receiver is made up of Columbus, Ohio brothers Casey and Jesse Cook and their music stemmed from a final year composition project that Casey was working on at Ohio State University in 2004. They later expanded the work to become an album, called Decades, in late 2006.

The vocals reminded me instantly of Elliott Smith, but the music accompanying them was something different…more ambient and definitely more complex than Elliott’s barebones style.

I urge you as strongly as my fingers can type to check out Goliath, With You In Quiet Space and Corner Pt. 1 on the band’s MySpace page. It’s the kind of luscious, layered music that’s great for lounging and pondering life on a patio. Just perfect downtempo music for a lazy afternoon. I just grabbed the album through their online store for $12; can’t wait to receive it in the mail!

Links:
MySpace: The Receiver
Official Site: The Receiver

Yet another cool band from Brooklyn, NY. Hercules And Love Affair. The first single from their self-titled album, which is out in North America on June 24 (but has been out in the UK for months - go figure) is called Blind, and like four other tracks on the collective’s debut album, it features Antony Hegarty of Antony And The Johnsons on vocals. You may recognize the androgynous vocalist from his triumph of the Mercury Prize in 2005 for the album I Am A Bird Now. The song Blind is so stunning - you really need to listen to it on the band’s MySpace page. I can’t wait to hear more gems from these guys once the album’s out!

Hercules And Love Affair is the brain child of NYC-based DJ Andy Butler and features guests like Nomi, Kim Ann Foxman and of course, Antony Hegarty. The album is part of the DFA Records archives and was produced by DFA honcho Tim Goldsworthy himself. You may recall that he’s also produced gorgeous albums for The Rapture and Cut Copy as well. Check ‘em!

Links:
MySpace: Hercules And Love Affair
Official Site Hercules And Love Affair

Ahhh! I’m such a procrastinator! I’ve seen Leeds, UK band Hadouken! mentioned on the pages (and cover once, I think) of NME heaps of times but had put off actually checking out their sound for the longest time. For some reason I associated the exclamation point at the end of their name (which, as you’d suspect, is from a special move in Street Fighter) with Kerrang! magazine, which I don’t read because I’m not interested in any of the music it features.

So anyway - last night I was listening to XFM’s April playlist - it’s a roundup of scads of songs that have been charting and getting massive airplay in the UK. And mostly it’s songs that haven’t made their way to North America yet. And I heard this GEM called Declaration Of War, and it’s by Hadouken!.

It’s a brash dancefloor jam with a wicked backbeat - I can’t stop listening to it! If you’re a fan of genre classifications, Hadouken! describe themselves as a fusion of grimecore and new rave (think Klaxons, New Younge Pony Club, CSS, SHITDISCO). There’s also a little bit of Enter Shikari-style electronica thrown in, with MCing and grime breakbeats.

Their debut album, Music for an Accelerated Culture, just came out this past Tuesday (May 5). Can’t wait to listen to the whole thing; what I’ve heard on MySpace is sickeningly danceable. Go listen!

Hadouken! hit the road hard earlier this week on a massive UK tour that includes festivals like Leeds and Reading. Hopefully they’ll expand their tour to the rest of Europe, and eventually North America, soon!

Links:
MySpace Hadouken!
Official Site Hadouken!

Last time I checked in with Winter Gloves, a deliciously sweet and youthful foursome from Quebec City (but have since settled in Montreal), they were kicking my ass (and trying to make me fall in love with them at the same time) at CMW, where they opened for Woodhands at The Drake. Frontman Charles F. promised us that the band was about to duck away into the studio to record their debut album, but in the meantime, they were giving away free copies of their three song EP, About A Girl (you can listen to it on the band’s MySpace page). According to the band’s MySpace, the EP was recorded using a single microphone in a combination of recording studio/cramped Montreal apartment, and mixed with the original ambient noise left alone to create a ‘pleasant, dirty sound’.

Word has it the band’s debut album is nearly ready and should be released by this coming September. Very exciting news! Check out this clip of the band recording the album at Halla Music in Toronto. It makes me giddy thinking about seeing them live again.

If you wanna see exactly what I mean, check them out when they open for Tokyo Police Club (whose album you can preview a week in advance here) over the next two weeks:

April 18 @ Barrymore’s Music Hall, Ottawa *
April 19 @ Cabaret Du Musee Juste Pour Rire, Montreal *
April 23 @ L’Escogriffe, Montreal #
May 2 @ The Opera House, Toronto *
May 3 @ The Opera House, Toronto *
May 31 @ Le Cercle, Quebec City %

* with Tokyo Police Club
# with Hexes And Ohs
% with Sea Wolf and Jealous Girlfriends

Links:
MySpace: Winter Gloves
Live: Let Me Drive

If you’ve been wishing/praying/hoping that Arctic Monkeys would release some new music already (I mean c’mon, their first two albums were absolute bangers), check out Taxi by The Author, who are also British. And also highly recommended by British BBC Radio 1 DJ Steve Lamacq. And who happen to also have an explosive first single that’s disgustingly danceable and brimming with quality riffs.

The Author come from Jersey (population: 89,300), one of The Channel Islands (where??). They’re a bunch of islands south of England that don’t belong to the UK or European Union. They’re kinda just chillin’ up there on their own. Needless to say, The Channel Islands haven’t spawned too many bands of their own…until now!

While I can’t tell you TOO much about the band (their biography’s a bit vague, they haven’t got a website apart from their MySpace page, and no debut album release date in sight), I can tell you that they’re a young and sassy five piece being managed by a new wing of Fierce Panda, the label that distributed Art Brut, Shitdisco, Coldplay, Keane and Death Cab For Cutie. Alberto and I have been bubbling about their first single, Taxi, for months now. Taxi’s been called the “evil twin of Klaxons’ From Atlantis To Interzone, which is quite the compliment. They’re described on MySpace as “Electro / Folk / 2-step”, but they’re nothing of the sort. Is it me or is that tagline area a bit of a farce? I can’t think of any bands that are accurately described in that one line…anyhoodle, check out The Author and Taxi and tell me it doesn’t make you wanna break out into dance mayhem.

Links:
MySpace:The Author

I’m absolutely loving the new album by Why? called Alopecia, which if you don’t know is a fancy term for a type of hair loss. Not the balding kind (aka “male pattern alopecia”), but the special where your hair falls out in giant clumps due to other medical conditions or stress. The album just came out on March 11 and it’s stellar.

You may recognize the first song that plays on the band’s MySpace page - it’s a cover of The Cure’s Close To Me, although a very, very different rendition. Only the lyrics are recognizable, in fact!

The band is in the middle of a huge North American tour that’s still got 24 dates left on it, among them, shows in Montreal (Wednesday, March 26 @ La Salla Rossa), Toronto (Thursday, March 27 @ Silver Dollar), and Vancouver (April 16 @ Media Club). You’d be wise to check them out while they’re still playing small venues!

All the usual outlets are also adoring the album - check out the roundup of positive reviews on Metacritic and go sample some songs on MySpace.

Links:
MySpace: Why?
Metacritic: Why? - Alopecia

So, I got an advance copy of the new Woodhands album Heart Attack earlier this week and it’s been kicking my ass for a solid four days now.

It’s a spastic, non-stop, balls out dance party. It’s actually kinda tough to listen to it at my desk without sporadically jiggling in my seat…which is why I’m uber excited that I’ll be seeing the pair at The Drake tomorrow night at Paper Bag Records’ CMW showcase.

Dan Werb and Paul Banwatt are the brilliant pair behind Woodhands, and
Heart Attack, their debut with Paper Bag Records (Woodhands also have a previously released self-titled album), comes out on April 1. You can buy it directly from PBR for just $12! Pre-order…do it.

It’s always a challenge describing the way an album sounds, especially when it’s got so many varied genres and styles wrapped up in it…it’s more like, the way it makes you feel. I find myself tracking back to album meaty opener Dancer over and over. And I love the vocoded vocals on I Wasn’t Made for Fighting - “I wanna do it one more time” - kinda reminscent of Daft Punk’s One More Time. Straighten The Curtains is the only moment of rest you get on Heart Attack - it’s the album’s lone downtempo track.

Woodhands are on the cover of this week’s Eye Weekly (out today!). And NOW Magazine lists them as part of their “Be Prepared” guide of CMW shows that are guaranteed to be rammed full and limited entry. Get there early.

Expect great things.

Links:
Official Site: Woodhands
MySpace: Woodhands
Record Label: Paper Bag Records