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Group Dynamics: Pretty bands (Plastiscines, Au Revoir Simone, Amiina, Yo Majesty, Electrelane) look pretty. (via)

Grab your swim trunks and sunscreen.

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mp3 | Boys Noize – Lava Lava

Don’t be afraid to get your hair wet.

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mp3 | Wzt Hearts – Lava Nile

• Boys Noize: Official Site | Myspace
• Buy Oi Oi Oi: Amazon | Insound
• Wzt Hearts: MySpace
• Buy Threads Rope Spell Making Your Bones: Amazon
• Photo credit: Patrick Taschler, APOD

It’s been almost a week since Daft Punk’s Rainbow Pyramid of Joy touched down (complete with the 5-tone “Close Encounters” greeting) in Los Angeles and shook 20,000 very happy people into a lather. I don’t have much of a review beyond that. Regardless of how I might come across, the show was a complete thrill. Almost enough to make me reconsider Human After All. It looked like this:

My friends who saw Daft Punk at Coachella last year said the set was virtually identical. No one was surprised, but no one was complaining.

When Planningtorock broke my heart and canceled her opening spot at the Knife show last year, the 2-hour-plus DJ set that took her place was dull and exhausting. So I was pleasantly surprised that SebastiAn and Kavinsky, with even more time to fill, kept the crowd’s interest and energy levels high. The fact that I had a place to sit probably helped. Ratatat’s live show was more energetic than I would have expected from their albums. Lots of heavy metal guitar theatrics. The visuals were impressive, and “Seventeen Years” brought folks to their feet.

I envy anyone seeing this show at The Greek in Berkeley tonight.

• Photo: robinroces | Video: genelegend

0:35: “It’s your party, but I’ll die if I want to, I’ll die if I want to.”

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mp3 | Los Campesinos! – We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives

2:45: “It’s your party, you can die if you want to, die if you want to, die if you want to…”

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mp3 | Lucky Soul – The Great Unwanted

Cardiff septet Los Campesinos! recently released their EP, Sticking Fingers Into Sockets. London sextet Lucky Soul released their album, The Great Unwanted, in April. Both feature singles that rank amongst the year’s most jubilant:

Los Campesinos! – You! Me! Dancing!

Lucky Soul – Add Your Light To Mine, Baby

Both are highly recommended, highly recommended.

• Los Campesinos!: Official Site | MySpace
• Buy Sticking Fingers Into Sockets: Amazon | Other Music
• Lucky Soul: Official Site | MySpace
• Buy The Great Unwanted: Amazon | 7digital

“Sexy! No, No, No…” is a fairly typical Xenomania/Girls Aloud single:

1. Not a “song” in the academic sense so much as a bunch of ironclad choruses stacked atop one another.
2. Rarely does what you expect it to. Surprises: goes quiet(er) for a short time, ends.
3. Not apparently about any damn thing in particular.
4. Generally awesome.

Despite the presence of a line about getting some coffee, “Biology” it ain’t. Maybe the vocoder bits go on longer than they need to. But I already like it more than “Something Kinda Ooooh.”

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mp3 | Girls Aloud – Sexy! No, No, No… (Radio Rip)

“Sexy! No, No, No…” will be released on September 3rd. The fourth and probably final album follows in November.

• Official Site

Released in the states this week, the deluxe edition of The Knife’s awesome awesome so-awesome Silent Shout comes with the original album, a live cd, and the DVD Silent Shout: An Audio Visual Experience. On that DVD, you’ll find the April 2006 concert in Gothenburg, Sweden, 11 music videos, and the short film “When I Found The Knife.” I was lucky enough to catch The Knife’s video installation/planetarium laser show/black mass at the El Rey last November. It’s a hell of a thing, and you can dance to it. Many Shubs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Sloar that day, I can tell you.

But as you know, The Knife isn’t just about otherworldly fear. If the Dreijer siblings weren’t tapped into great swaths of human experience, would they have been able to write what might be the best song of the decade?

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mp3 | The Knife – Heartbeats (Live)

• Official Site | MySpace
• Buy Silent Shout – Deluxe Edition: Amazon | Insound

Maybe you don’t live in Arizona. Maybe you can’t see the stars at night. This is for those days when you’re just not feeling fluffy.

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mp3 | The Orb and Alan Parker – Grey Clouds

• The Orb Official Site | The League Against Tedium
• Buy Annie Nightingale Presents Y4K: Amazon UK

Blog darling and Sufjan Stevens/Polyphonic Spree alum Annie Clark released her debut album under the St. Vincent moniker, Marry Me, a week ago. An exemplary work of alt-pop, um, singer-songwritersmanship, it can sit comfortably alongside—or above—recent releases by Andrew Bird, Rufus Wainwright, and My Brightest Diamond. Most of the press I’ve been reading on Marry Me seems to stress a between-the-wars French cabaret feeling. While the sound is there, and its presence far from disagreeable, it certainly doesn’t overwhelm the album or any one song in particular, and you could easily point to a dozen other musical points of reference. Any attempts to peg down the album’s sound inevitably discount the breadth of Clark’s songwriting interests. Or perhaps my life is so much like a French cabaret that I no longer notice these things.

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mp3 | St. Vincent – Land Mines

The first time I heard “Land Mines,” the song it most reminded me of was “Pilots” from Felt Mountain. It has that same, lush, patient quality. Here, Clark seems to be granting her emotions a sort of indifferent otherness. Sometimes our desires get away from us, and a heart in love, especially one’s own, becomes dangerous. One misplaced step and… KA-BOOM.

Marry Me is available now.

• Official Site | MySpace | Love Letters
• Buy Marry Me: Amazon | Insound

Karma Police

No Surprises

• Official site | Dead Air Space
• How To Be Like Colin Greenwood In Ten Easy Steps

Apparently, I just can’t put off posting news about Ms. Murphy the way I can put off posting anything else. “Overpowered” now has a thoroughly charming video that further develops her new promo campaign’s theme of utter fabulousness in even the most mundane circumstances.

Be sure to hear the new b-side, “Sweet Nothings,” on HerSpace.

Update – 6/13: iPop has a pair of “Overpowered” remixes.

• Official site | Myspace
• Buy Ruby Blue: Amazon

Popjustice has the first words and noise on Róisín Murphy’s follow-up to the best album of 2005, Ruby Blue. What they have to say –

A lot of the album is a bit like Goldfrapp meets Annie meets Grace Jones meets quite a bit of 80s soul with Timbaland-esque knob-twiddling, although it is also fair to say Roisin has probably been listening to Bertine Zetlitz….

– makes me very excited. Read more here.

The first single, “Overpowered,” features chubby (not quite fat), leaky (not quite squirty) synths, Róisín’s soulful voice, and a lovely bit with a harp. It just might be the sexiest song to ever use the words “chromosome” and “oxytoxin.”

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mp3 | Róisín Murphy – Overpowered (Radio Edit)

“Overpowered” will be released on July 2nd, with the as-yet-untitled album following in October.

• Official site | Myspace
• Buy Ruby Blue: Amazon

Christina Aguilera @ Staples Center; The Secret; NannyDuck; Lavender Diamond; New Young Pony Club; Cut Copy; Björk; Jarvis Cocker; The Apple, by Michel Faber; Un Lun Dun, by China Miéville; The Third One; etc. » Read the rest of this entry «