Listen Before You Buy

Fanfarlo still occasionally sound a heck of a lot like Arcade Fire and/or Beirut, but with a dash of synths on top on “Rooms Filled With Light” they’re approaching a sound that’s a little more their own, even if it’s not new.

White Birds deftly sway from roots-based, whispering minimalism all the way to lush, orchestral heights on this profoundly interesting album. There’s not a single skippable track on “When Women Played Drums”.

Check out Arcade Fire’s newest piece of music in almost a year, a track that appears on the new Hunger Games soundtrack.

Joyland have been together for less than a year but have a sound that belongs to a band with a longer history than that. Having listened to both the tracks they’ve got featured on their Soundcloud page it’s easy to see why they were picked up by 140dB shortly after their first gig.

The Decemberists have a brand new song on the new soundtrack to The Hunger Games which you can hear right now.

French Wives hail from Glasgow, Scotland and wish they had an interesting back-story as to how the band formed. Instead, they’ve got some great tunes to serve as their introduction.

Dry The River have become a regular name in the “bands to watch” slots that appear in the media around this time of year, and their single “No Rest” has over half a million views on YouTube – not bad for a band who’s first official EP, “Weights & Measures”, was only released just over a month ago.

Régine Chassagne is so damn fabulous!

This live video of  “Josh McBride” and “Oh Virginia” is case and point why The Head And The Heart are one of my all-time favorite bands. Each time they play it is absolutely incredible, you would be in a tough argument to try and persuade me into believing there is actually a better band to [...]

I’ve often admitted that I’m not a huge fan of the Spanish music scene. There are very few bands that I’ve found myself enjoying, and most of the acts I do listen to (such as Polock or The Sunday Drivers), happen to sing in English. One welcome exception to this trend is vetusta morla (who prefer to [...]

Siskiyou will be putting out “Keep Away The Dead” on October 4, one of the more promising albums of 2011. Comprised of Great Lake Swimmers members Colin Huebert and Erik Arnesen who are now stepping away from the duo aspect that has been Siskiyou up to this point and adding full-time members Shaunn Watt and [...]

A quick update on the music news for the week before I get started: The Righteous Brothers‘ cover of “Unchained Melody” is on jukeboxes everywhere; anticipation for The Beatles‘ up-coming album “Help!” is reaching fever pitch; and The Ronettes‘ latest, “Is This What I Get For Loving You?”, has flopped, rather embarrassingly. That’s right: it’s [...]

Eugh. Just look at those publicity shots. Dylan Champagne has been crafted to look like the most smug man on the planet. His fighting stance on the left is just inviting you to hit him. With photos like those, an album called “Love Songs of the Apocalypse Volume 1″ and a bandcamp blurb that describes [...]

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It was almost exactly a year to the day when Arcade Fire started dropping some 12″ vinyl singles in record stores across the world, much to the surprise of everyone.  People were cropping up online posting pictures of this vinyl that wasn’t announced by the band, something that shoppers were finding randomly littered amongst other [...]

I think there’s something particularly special about music that’s really evocative of a time or place. It’s why I never grow tired of Guillemots‘ “Through The Windowpane” – every time I listen I actually feel like I’m on a train to Brazil, and end up heartbroken in São Paulo. Pretty epic. The Lonely Wild have [...]