Clockin’ in at just over an hour, we have some outstanding new music for you to checkout this week. Stream the tunes below, or join the podcast to get the complete mixtape! As always, some of our favorite podcasting sources include…iTunes, Podcast.com, and Podcast Alley. So what are you waiting for, friend, sign up!
The Unnatural Helpers Cracked Love and Other Drugs is out now on Hardly Art, and it sounds like a fast driving summer classic! Dean Whitmore continues to kick the shit out of the drums while alternately screaming or talking about all that “stupid buzzing ’round his head”, and the album also features hot-rod guitar work from Seattle ax-men like Brian Standeford and Leo Gebhardt (The Catheters, Tall Birds, and Idle Times) as well as Kinski‘s Chris Martin! Kimberly Morrison of The Dutchess and the Duke rounds out the Seattle crew and contributes bass and vocals. Production by Seattle mainstay Kurt Block. Cracked Love and Other Drugs keeps punk dumb, sweaty, and beautiful!
MP3: Unnatural Helpers “Girl In the Window” Hardly Art
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London trio Male Bonding sound right at home on Sub Pop! Their new album, Nothing Hurts, rips through 13 songs in a half hour flat, all the time dishing up lo-fi, hook-laden, power-punk goodness. Delicious! On “Years Not Long” Kevin Hendrix vocals pervade with a cool and cloudy longing while guitar and drums keep him company in double time.
MP3: Male Bonding “Years Not Long” Sub Pop Records
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Looks like London’s Veronica Falls have only one release available right now on a US label, and it is a 7″ on Captured Tracks, so go out and grab it! The band is still unsigned, but if “Found Love In A Graveyard” is any indication it won’t be long, as Veronica Falls are quite capable of making the minor key cute and spooky with effortless craft.
MP3: Veronica Falls “Found Love In A Graveyard” Captured Tracks
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Bay area band Sic Alps have a killer sound, playing lo-fi 90’s pop meets 60’s psychedelic, and the result is a woozy, off-kilter kind of love buzz that we can’t help digging. The band has released on a slew of labels including Siltbreeze, Mt. St. Mtn., Slumberland, Drag City and more! The tune “L. Mansion” makes great lyrical use of the repurposed “She went to see a doctor…” slurring and blurring it opaquely into new usage.
MP3: Sic Alps “L. Mansion” Slumberland Records
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Baltimore’s Double Dagger breath all kinds of life into post-hardcore with two tough and infectious releases on Thrill Jockey, the LP More and the EP Masks. The newest is the EP Masks, and the record comes in three limited edition die-cut covers printed in metallic ink. This track, “No Allies”, is off the LP More, and it sounds just as vital as hardcore did 30 years ago, except more catchy!
MP3: Double Dagger “No Allies” Thrill Jockey Records
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Ty Segall‘s third album, Melted, just came out, and who better to ask what it sounds like than Ty himself! “Hey Ty, what does your new album sound like?””Cherry cola, Sno-Cones and taffy!” Indeed! Sick and sweet.
MP3: Ty Segall “Girlfriend” Goner Records
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Wow! Here is an awesome track from a Toronto artist named Warren Hildebrand, who records under the name Foxes In Fiction. He says about the project, “Foxes in Fiction is vehicle for different musical ideas that I have and want to try and put to work despite a lack of a band. I record in my apartment in Toronto, Ontario and release a lot of my work under an online & cassette label I run called Orchid Tapes. I play live shows in and around Toronto using guitars, voice and electronics.” His new limited edition cassette Swung From the Branches is great. Get one before they are gone!
MP3: Foxes In Fiction “Flashing Lights Have Ended Now” Orchid Tapes
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The Fresh & Onlys Tim Cohen and Shayde Sartin continue to write very cool songs, as evidenced on their soon to be released EP, August on My Mind, due out on Captured Tracks. The band kicks off the EP in fine fashion with the hot and burning “Diamonds in the Dark”, which features smoldering guitar work, and the haunting insistence of Tim Cohen’s vocals intoning psych- tinged lyrics like, “Let’s you and I make eyes again/Up in the sky tonight!”
MP3: The Fresh & Onlys “Diamonds in the Dark” Captured Tracks
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Woom is the musical project of Sara Magenheimer and Eben Portnoy, and it emerged out of an earlier band they had worked on, Fertile Crescent. After touring cross country with Deerhoof in 2008, the duo returned to a barn in Massachusetts to completely re-work their sound and method. Emerging from that process with a new name, Woom, the band is set to release it’s first full length, Muu’s Way, on Ba Da Bing Records June 28th. The band is touring Europe with Xiu Xiu currently, but will be home this summer to tour the West coast.
MP3: Woom “The Hunt” Muu’s Way Ba Da Bing Records
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Kill Rock Stars included in one of their recent newsletters several great tracks from bands on their stellar back catalogue. We decided to include “Bad Circulation” from KRS super-group Witchypoo. The bandpage at KRS for Witchypoo lists over 25 members including label founder Slim Moon and uber bassist Joe Preston! This still sounds fresh and raw.
MP3: Witchypoo “Bad Circulation” Kill Rock Stars
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Effi Briest have released Rhizomes, their first full length, and it is on Sacred Bones Records. After releasing several tightly crafted singles and 7″‘s, it’s great to hear this across a whole record. On the albums title track below, this Brooklyn band, six women strong, fully distill their song writing abilities, and it is a masterpiece. “Rhizomes” is a highly elevated work, musically powerful and philosophically charged…everything art is meant to be. This will probably stand as one of the best singles of the year!
MP3: Effi Briest “Rhizomes” Sacred Bones Records
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“…and best Creepy Cover of the Year Award goes to…Wax Fang!” Last month Louisville, Kentucky band Wax Fang signed to Absolutely Kosher Records, and this month we have their second full-length, La-La-Land, which is a whole bunch more than a creepy cover. Scott Carney and company write powerful, sprawling, and earnest music. Currently touring Great Britain and playing the ATP festival, it won’t be long before you hear a lot about this band!
MP3: Wax Fang “World War ll (Part 2)” Absolutely Kosher Records
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Chicago duo, Locks, began several years back as a lo-fi, art rock, experiment playing house parties, galleries and lofts. In 2007, they released a promising EP, Bad Words, mastered by Bob Weston, and put out on Static Station Records. Work on their first full length stalled when both band members got called into other projects and duties…Theo Katsaounis found himself playing drums for Chicago’s Joan of Arc and D. Rider and Patrick Scott doing tour sound for Neko Case, Liars, Album Leaf, etc. Well, the duo has finally reconvenned, and we now have their first full-length, Suicides Don’t Committ Themselves, also out on Static Station.
MP3: Locks “That Will Never Get Blood Out Of A Clown Suit” Static Station Records
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A couple things you know about Sewn Leather right off, dude has chains around his neck, and when he smokes punk, the punk smokes weed. Don’t smoke punk in bed. It’s not okay…Look for Sewn Leather, DJ Dog Dick, Narwhalz (of sound) to torture some electronics and drum machines in your town this summer!
MP3: Sewn Leather “Smoke ov the Pvnk”
Beach Fossils are a young Brooklyn trio with a 7″ and a self-titled LP out on Captured Tracks. On the tune, “Youth”, hazy and pretty guitar tones feel like a cloudy day at the beach, and reverbed and doubled vocals, a little out of time, only add to the wistful mood.
MP3: Beach Fossils “Youth” Captured Tracks
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Sun House is now just Houses, and the artist has an album due next month called All Night, on Lefse Records. Seems he spent several months in Hawaii recording it, and learning to “purify rain water”. Once the track “Endless Spring” gets going at the right speed cool and green breezes saturate this little bedroom gem.
MP3: Houses “Endless Spring” Lefse Records
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Seattle musician Zach Tillman is making some extraordinary music under the moniker Pearly Gates Music. Lovely, rugged and stripped down, “The Great Escape” makes the most of a couple of guitar chords, a drum machine beat, and some crunchy white noise. However, it is Tillman’s amazing voice that shines through on this great track.
MP3: Pearly Gates Music “The Great Escape” Barsuk Records
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Across 9 albums and 14 years, Trans Am have pushed hard into post-rock with a meticulous, robot-like persistance. It seems their most recent album on Thrill Jockey, Thing, was supposed to be a sound track for a huge budget, sci-fi (think Avatar) until Mr. Cameron got cold feet. Thing continues this bands relentless search for the perfect melding of man and machine blurring the lines between the two in dazzling ways!
MP3: Trans Am “Apparent Horizon” Thrill Jockey Records
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Hooray! have a limited edition cassette coming out soon on Wonder Bread Records called, Bedroom Adventures. You won’t find “The Psychiatrist” there, but if you like to float off on little clouds of legendary pink dots, you might be able to make contact! Hooray! is 20 year old Ben Wagner from Batavia, Illinois.
MP3: Hooray! “The Psychiatrist”
We’ve been loving on the first full-length release from Dum Dum Girls, I Will Be, on Sub Pop Records. The first single “Jail La La” was an infectious and fun garage blast, but on the most recent single “D.A.L” they take down the tempo for a Cat Power-like, late night ditty, of tamborines and longing.
MP3: Dum Dum Girls “D.A.L.” Sub Pop Records
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