Blogs

Support DC bands! DC band Cigarette has described themselves as a spiritual band, however they are better described as a spiritual movement. Cigarette creates a level of discreet music that speaks volumes, transcending what some consider minimal. Much like modern art,...

British new-wave heartbreak Your tearful pint of Ben and Jerry‰'s has nothing on this album. This synthpop Seattle band makes mourning as upbeat as anyone can possibly manage. Most of the album stays pretty dark and lamenting, using synth and depressing Robert...

Krill Forever Krill follows up their brilliant second album, Lucky Leaves, with perhaps the best-named EP in history: Steve Hears Pile in Malden and Bursts Into Tears. The EP is a concept album about two Bostonian chums, Steve and Mouth, who become characters in the...

  Manhattan garage-pop Four NYC bartenders walk out of a job and start a band. I forget how the joke ends, but it definitely isn‰'t SKATERS. With all the classic elements of your standard rock band contrasting mellow vocal melodies, Manhattan sounds like a modern...

  Atmospheric desert blues straight out of Africa Tinariwen is a group of Tuareg musicians hailing from Mali, Libya and other African nations that perform a mix of traditional Tuareg music and Western guitar rock called “desert blues‰” featuring apparently...

  Raw emotion and guitars The first full-length album released by Baby Baby is pretty decent. There is a diverse range of songs, however some of them lacking climactic moments. The timber of the vocals is similar to those of Paul Banks of Interpol and Hamilton...

  A hard rock/lo-fi curtain of sound that‰'s sloppy in all the right ways The only way to truly describe the sound of The Book-Burners is “slapped together,‰” not in the sense that it‰'s shoddily assembled, but in the sense that their influences are fairly varied...

  Not your dad’s Bossa Nova BossacucaNova is a Brazilian jazz trio known for combining bossa nova with electronic elements. Though the band explores new ways of making music, their sound remains firmly rooted in bossa nova and samba. BossacucaNova takes the...

Indie rock that will resemble a lot of your favorite bands “Night Chills‰” is the A-side of So Many Wizards‰' newly released 7‰Û, and is the more upbeat tune of the two. It begins with a very heavy bass backing, and is quickly joined by a dreamy guitar riff quietly...

  Newish Foals sound, except more low-key Breton is a five piece London band that formed back in 2007 and have released several EPs as well as one album prior to their new release, War Room Stories. The band‰'s sound is experimental indie rock with some...

  Ghost-themed Japanese-American artpop Hotel Valentine is an “avant-pop” concept album about love between ghosts who haunt the hallways of a hotel, but if you can get over that it’s also an album full of jazzy, trip-hoppy pop tunes. Cibo Matto’s sound is...

  Airy, simple, ambient It is hard to describe this album as dark and dreery, because while Marissa‰'s sound is ghost like and spacious, it leaves you with a certain amount of consolation. With airy vocals spread generously over a soft guitar and occasional faint...

  Yin and yang of a soft female voice and electronic beats From the first sound of Priscilla Ahn‰'s voice, you think this is going to be another mildly charming indie acoustic female song writer type noise. The polished sweetness of Priscilla‰'s voice demands...

  Be proud to like this “indie” band Brooklyn quintet Snowmine has found indie-pop perfection with their sophomore album Dialects. Subtle yet effective use of fluttering flutes and pianos can be traced throughout the album most notably on it‰'s opener “To Hold an...

  Emotionally-charged, genre-blending mellow indie rock With shades of their Southern roots and a specific brand of melancholy, Mississippi-based band Water Liars‰' new self-titled album has huge ambition, and rightfully so. The album is full of contrasts, going...

  Quirky and creative indie pop that is always at a high point PT Walkley‰'s newest album, Shoulders is the epitome of perfect indie pop. From the album opener “Leeches‰Û, with the cutesy and creative line “I‰'d rather let leeches treat me like a milkshake than...

  Relaxing and ambitious experimental noise rock with a hint of indie New Madrid‰'s newest album packs a lot of sound into just seven songs. The first half of the album features several rolling, low-fi indie tunes that manage to be catchy and fuse in noise rock...

60’s psych, again Holy Wave are not trying to hide their influences here. If I wanted to, I could just skip the review and list off 60‰'s rock bands for a whole paragraph, and honestly it would be a better descriptor of what they sound like than what I‰'m...

  Garage reissue falls flat The description of this record on Burger Records website tells me that this is a long lost gem from the 2003-2004 noise rock scene. Cool and exciting as this may sound, The Traps, for all their noise and heaviness and loud guitars, are...

  Selfie-advocate AND talented Burial‰'s material is so scarcely released that, at this point, every EP, every single, every selfie, is followed with a firestorm of coverage from every corner of the ‰electronic‰' music community, and rightfully so. His string of...

  Baltimore group steps up their game I‰'ve always known Sun Club to be messy, totally unorganized, and entirely unreliable live. Sometime in the past few months, however, these Capital Punishment alum‰'s have really stepped up their game, releasing an EP with...

  Indie-pop Latin-synth This five-piece London group got their name from a Baudelaire poem, reference Chuck Palahniuk, and make music as contrasting as their literary allusions. Let‰'s Go Extinct sounds like some Brits stole a Cuban jazz band and decided to sing...