The upcoming issue of Esopus Magazine features a compilation of songs by various artists “inspired by a customer-service experience in their past.” Swedish singer-songwriter Jens Lekman contributed to the collection with his tune ‘Regarding a Package,’ which tells the unusual story of a fan sending him a dead bird in the mail.
Suspend the gender disbelief for a second and indulge in Jack White's grainy, sounds-like-vinyl cover of 'Coal Miner's Daughter.' He can't be a daughter, of course, but he sure brings plenty of grit to this Loretta Lynn classic.
Pure Noise Records' top act, State Champs, are riding the wave of their highly successful debut, 'Overslept.'
The Record Store Day exclusives just keep on coming. This Saturday (April 20) saw the release of a new Best Coast 7-inch single titled 'Fear of My Own Identity,' and the warm and fuzzy little nugget of tambourine- (and booty-) shaking goodness will sound mighty fine spinning around your turntable with a needle riding its grooves. But if you don't have a record player -- or you're just still deciding whether you actually want to pick it up on vinyl -- you can opt for the less glamorous option of listening via a YouTube stream. Check it out below.
More so than most bands, Dispatch have built their reputation on live performances, and on June 4, the jammy New England rockers drop 'Ain't No Trip to Cleveland Vol. 1,' a two-disc testament to their live power and eclectic sound. In advance of the release, the genre-hopping trio has premiered a live version of 'Get Ready Boy' (listen below), a particularly raucous number whose studio version appears on last year's 'Circles Around the Sun,' their first album in more than a decade.
Sessions for Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' recent 'Push the Sky Away' album, their first in five years, were so fruitful that the band offered an outtake, 'Animal X,' as a Record Store Day exclusive 7-inch single. Reportedly named after an Australian nature documentary series from the ’90s, the tune maintains the basic tenets of the classic Seeds sound, yet the group alters the formula with warped symphonic instrumentation backing Cave's spoken-word meanderings. The resulting tune kind of comes off like a shortened, sped-up and stereophonic version of the Velvet Underground's classic poetry jam, 'The Gift.' Check it out below.
High schoolers dreading the prospect of reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's Roaring Twenties novel 'The Great Gatsby,' take note: Lana Del Rey is a huge fan. In fact, the suave singer contributed the new, original tune 'Young & Beautiful' to director Baz Luhrmann's big-screen adaptation of the book, adding her star power to a soundtrack that also includes songs from the xx, Florence + the Machine, Gotye, Jack White and more.
A man can only rage for so long. After two years of playing guitar with the math-y Atlanta post-hardcore outfit the Chariot, Bryan Taylor has pulled up a desk chair and parked himself at the computer. There, piecing together tracks for his Slowriter side project, he fits together beats, loops, textures and lyrics, emerging with a kind of spoke-sung electro-pop.
What qualifies Nelson Nuñez and Jonny Molina -- a couple of NYC dudes who met four years ago at a recording studio and have since been bashing out totally boss garage-punk jams -- to sing about valley girls, those famously vapid mall-dwelling pariahs of Southern California?
Actor and comedian Creed Bratton is best known for his uproarious roll on 'The Office,' but this May, he returns to his first love: songwriting.
