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I used to work in an office with a guy who played drums for the band Asobi Seksu. When he told me the name of his band, I found the moniker to be strange, inviting, and enchanting … till he informed me it was a Japanese translation of the English-language term “sport fucking” (which the band had lifted from Fight Club). Ann Arbor quartet Pity Sex have chosen a handle that is no less dubious in origin than Asobi Seksu, and it’s made doubly so by the fact that the band doesn’t even bother to glamour-cloak it in non-English. Oddly, though, Pity Sex and Asobi Seksu have more in common than just their dispiriting monikers: Both bands are quartets that play blissful and gigantic-sounding shoegaze pop with alternating female-male vocals and overdriven guitars. Pity Sex — drummer Sean St. Charles, guitarist/vocalist Brennan Greaves, bassist Brandan Pierce, and guitarist/vocalist Britty Drake — emerged in 2012 with the six-song Dark World EP (which you can check out on the band’s Bandcamp), and they’re now set to release their first full-length, Feast Of Love. We’ve got the Greaves-fronted album-opener “Wind-Up” for you to spin today, and if it means anything, it’s one of my favorite songs of 2013 — all feedback and fat, fuzzy guitars, glorious melancholy and insane pop hooks. I honestly love it. Listen.

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For certain segments of the population, including some of us who may be reluctant to admit such things, an adorable Zooey Deschanel dance routine is pretty much audio-visual crack cocaine. And that group of people (which, let’s be honest, probably encompasses Stereogum’s entire readership, as well as its staff) should enjoy the living hell out of She & Him’s new video for “I Could’ve Been Your Girl.” Deschanel herself directed this one, in which she tries and fails to get the attention of her bandmate M. Ward. This probably makes band practice awkward. Watch it below.

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The rising London producer slows down the electro-pop smash.

Icona Pop’s Charli XCX-featuring ‘I Love It’ had pop hit written all over it, even before it was featured in HBO’s Girls. While some might find the neon original a bit too garish, this remix by Bobby Champs turns down the lights to great effect.

Champs (who has released tracks on Pictures Music, Hypercolour, and WNCL Recordings) slows down ‘I Love It’, washes the kiss-off vocals in reverb, and rebuilds the beat with a slo-mo house engine. Stream the remix below; the single will see release in the UK on July 1, backed with remixes by Jakwob, Fix8, and Style of Eye.

The social networking site claims the song 'Under The Infuence' was actually a rip-off of a Michael Jackson track

Today, Sally Shapiro released Elsewhere, a remix album of her most recent full-length Somewhere Else. Among refits from Young Galaxy, Little Boots, and Nite Jewel is this Dan Lissvik’s flip of Shapiro’s “If It Doesn’t Rain.” Both versions are darkly emphatic, but Lissvik takes it late night, seedy Miami. Check it out below.

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Close your eyes and try to envision how Zooey Deschanel might make a video for She and Him. Now, open them and watch your wildest imagination come to life. In their latest video for “I Could’ve Been Your Girl”, off Volume 3, Deschanel bundles together just about everything that makes She and Him more or less That Cutesy Indie Band. The end result is an adorable video that feels inspired by Italian cinema, or perhaps that’s because M. Ward can’t shake his resemblance to Marcello Mastroianni. Whatever the case, while this might have you going “aww” or “ugh”, everyone will agree: It’s time we find some Peeps to snack on. Confused? Watch the Easter colors blossom in Deschanel’s video below.

Volume 3 is out now via Merge. In support of the release, M. Ward and Deschanel will hit the road together beginning next month.

She & Him 2013 Tour Dates:
06/13

(photo via The National's Instagram)

As mentioned, The National are playing small NYC shows today, including Mercury Lounge at 10 PM (tickets go on sale at noon), Public Assembly at 5 PM (free), and now they've announced a very-last-minute one happening at Sycamore in Ditmas Park at 12:30 PM. The venue is (or was) booked by Jessica Dessner, sister of The National's Bryce and Aaron Dessner.

The show was announced via the instagram which is pictured above. It was announced so last minute, as to obviously keep anyone but their neighbors and people who knew about the show away from the super small show in in their hood of Ditmas Park.

If you can't get into any of today's small shows, there's still the huge Barclays Center show on June 5 with Youth Lagoon. Tickets for that show are still available and we're also giving away a pair.

The National's new album, Trouble Will Find Me, is out today. Video for its single, "Sea of Love," below...

Continue reading "The National playing Sycamore in Ditmas Park at 12:30 PM" at brooklynvegan

by Fred Pessaro

Lets face it, I've always been more of an East Coast guy when it came to hip hop. In the classic 2Pac vis BIG (happy birthday Mr. Wallace!) discussion, I fall BIG every time. Wu-Tang was always more important to me than No Limit, the south or Cali crews like Freestyle Fellowship and Heiroglyphics. Yet there is always an exception to every rule, and this exception is Souls of Mischief's classic, 93 til Infinity:

93 'til Infinity is the debut album by Souls of Mischief[, and was] ...propelled into success by its title track and lead single, which reached #72 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also featured singles "That's When Ya Lost" and "Never No More" which reached the Hot Rap Singles, but never charted on The Billboard Hot 100. According to Allmusic author Steve Huey, "Although the title cut is an underappreciated classic, 93 'til Infinity makes its greatest impression through its stunning consistency, not individual highlights." Huey also goes on to remark that 93 'til Infinity is "one of the most slept-on records of the '90s". -[Wiki]

Yes, it has been two decades since the release of 93 Til Infinity, but you can celebrate the record's release and here it in its entirety on the "Stillfinity" tour, currently on a campaign throughout North America. Look for Souls of Mischief to hit SOBs on July 3 with a live band in tow. Tickets are still ...

In the video for “Iodine,” the latest single from Copenhagen electro-poppers When Saints Go Machine, a mysterious radiation-suited figure drives an old-school ragtop out to the middle of the desert, descends into a bottomless pit, and explores the crystalline cave he finds down there. You know, normal Sunday-afternoon stuff. Kristian Nordentoft and William Reynish direct the slow but absorbing clip; watch it below.

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by Andrew Sacher

Philly neo-soul singer Bilal returned this year with his highly accessible and slightly psychedelic new album, A Love Surreal, which came out this past February. He celebrated it in NYC with a "nearly packed" release show at Highline Ballroom that month, and earlier this May he kicked off the album's world tour. That tour brings him back to NYC for a show at SOB's on June 9. Tickets for the SOB's show are on sale now. All dates are listed below.

Last week (5/14), Bilal performed with The Roots (who he's collaborated with before) on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, playing a cover of Steely Dan's "Black Cow." You can check out that video, the music video for A Love Surreal single "Back to Love," the tour trailer, and tour flyer, below...

Continue reading "Bilal released 'A Love Surreal', on tour (dates & videos)" at brooklynvegan

Well, here’s what I want for Christmas: The Clash have announced plans to reissue their entire back catalog in a new box set shaped like — wait for it — a Boombox. Due out September 9th, Sound System collects the band’s five studio albums — 1977′s The Clash, 1978′s Give ‘Em Enough Rope, 1979′s London Calling, 1980′s Sandinista!, and 1982′s Combat Rock — yes, even they’ve disowned Cut the Crap (!) — along with three discs of singles, rarities, demos, and B-sides.

There’s also a DVD featuring all of the band’s videos and “unseen footage by Julien Temple and Don Letts”, reprints, a new issue of the band’s Armagideon Time fanzine, an exclusive poster, dog tags, stickers, badges, and more. It will all be housed inside said Boombox, which was designed by bassist Paul Simonon. Guitarist Mick Jones calls it the “best box set ever,” and it’s hard to disagree.

Speaking to The Guardian, Jones digresses on the rarities:

There’s so much there that you wouldn’t have heard before. It was like discovering stuff, because the advances in mastering are so immense since the last time [the Clash catalogue] was remastered in the 90s… We had to bake the tapes beforehand– the oxide on them is where the music is, so if...

Best-selling biography will be available on May 23

Tomorrow’s harvest: a transmission from the increasingly enigmatic duo.

Apparently, a month-long mystery was not enough intrigue for the Scottish brothers. Boards of Canada just tweeted the following date, time, and location: “May 22nd 24:00 @ 1-23-10 Jinnan Shibuya-ku Tokyo”. The address is in Tokyo’s trendy Shibuya-ku district, and searches lead to either a bank, a Hello Kitty store, or department store 109Mens. This story is developing.

Update: As Tokyo-resident Matt Lyne points out via Twitter, the address leads to “a video screen at the big crossing,” nothing that Radiohead tried a similar event in 2011 that was cancelled due to police fears about crowd size.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow’s harvest: a transmission from the increasingly enigmatic duo.

Apparently, a month-long mystery was not enough intrigue for the Scottish brothers. Boards of Canada just tweeted the following date, time, and location: “May 22nd 24:00 @ 1-23-10 Jinnan Shibuya-ku Tokyo”. The address is in Tokyo’s trendy Shibuya-ku district, and searches lead to either a bank, a Hello Kitty store, or department store 109Mens. This story is developing.

Update: As Tokyo-resident Matt Lyne points out via Twitter, the address leads to “a video screen at the big crossing,” noting that Radiohead tried a similar event in 2011 that was cancelled due to police fears about crowd size.

Tomorrow

“I told you that I’d been writing/This song is proof that I’m trying,” sings Devon Welsh on “Impersonator,” the title track off his new album. The key word in the lyric is “trying.” Through his work as part of Majical Cloudz, a Montreal-based synth-pop project with Matthe Otto, Welsh has chronicled his own anxieties about the creative process and more often than not the words he associates with it—lies, illusions, magic—are rooted in deception. His work is often self-referential and even meta-textual, but it’s rarely concerned with seeming clever, witty or cute. Welsh sings in a deep, expressive baritone—think Leonard Cohen, think Matt Berninger, think a sad owl clutching a dead mouse in its mouth—and the arrangements that surround him float around him with a stark, urgent simplicity that contradicts the band’s fanciful name. If he’s hiding behind something, it’s a simple white mask. Nothing ornate. “I’m a liar,” he sings in the album’s opening moments over a bed of processed vocal samples. “I say I make music.”

He does make music, and he’s been doing it for a while now. Welsh and Otto released the Turns Turns Turns EP last year through the small Montreal record label and artist community Arbutus, the home to cosmopolitan, experimental pop acts like Grimes, Blue Hawaii and Doldrums. These artists each have a busy, k...