UK band Kava Kava have released their new record Forwards on US label Midnight Swimming to rave reviews. Digital magazines and bloggers such as Skope, MadLoud, Verbicide, Be, Skiboard and Live to Ride are among the many who are giving the record high praise. "[Kava Kava] fully realizes a distinct and unique sound that is bringing the indie music scene to its knees ... Well-earned confidence leaks through every song like sex streams from your television, says Indie Music Universe. They are also featured on the new iTunes game Tap Tap Revenge and songs from the record have appeared on Weeds, Xbox 360 snowboarding game Stoked, John From Cincinnati, and Dirt.
Enter Shikari has just released a video that captures the band performing their hit song "Zzzonked" from their debut album Common Dreads.
The recently shot video directed by Bob Harlow and produced by Stitchthat was created with an extremely small budget and showcases the band at their finest.
Check out the video here and head over to the bands official site to stay up to date on the latest Enter Shikari news.
Stellastarr formed in March 2000 from the ashes of a previous musical effort formed while studying art and design at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
A few years later, after a chance meeting with Michael, who had recently relocated to Brooklyn and had left his former band Charlotte's Funeral behind in his hometown of Philadelphia, the former classmates reunited, this time with Shawn on vocals.
Stellastarr played their first gig at Luna Lounge, formerly on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in July 2000, and released a limited series of independent/homemade EP CDs shortly thereafter.
They have toured with (among others) Jane's Addiction, The Raveonettes, Placebo, supported by The Killers, and Editors. Stellastarr have played live in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Europe.
Canada's reggae-enthused illScarlett feels like a mix of Sublime meets No Doubt with a dash of Goldfinger thrown in for good measure.
A cast of chill characters raised on their parents’ Beatles and Queen records, and influenced by the likes of Nirvana, Incubus, Beck, The Police, and Foo Fighters, the Mississauga, Ontario, Canada natives built the initial framework for illScarlett’s infectious sound, perfect for fist-pumping punk/pop/reggae jams, by cultivating, shaping and finessing their songs into their own signature creations.
They could be described as a rhythm and reggae influenced, filthy dub band that takes no prisoners, but just go to an illScarlett show and you'll find a slew of sweaty, screaming kids who are fans of hip-hop, punk and emo, charged full of frenetic energy, jumping off the stage and rolling in the pit.
Currently on tour with like-minded party bros Pepper, and soon to hit the road with Big D & The Kids Table, illScarlett is winning over new fans every night. While on this most current trek the band is selling its first U.S. release, EPdemic.
Los Angeles pop duo, BOOMKAT, is the lush, velvet mixture of pop pastiche that draws from a diverse palette of influences. Presenting a wide array of urban beats and melodies, along with the expression of personal loss and fragile hope, BOOMKAT passionately displays their versatility in their new album, A Million Trillion Stars (Little Vanilla Records).
At the nucleus of BOOMKAT are brother and sister Kellin and Taryn Manning. Their sound surges with tangible color, in hues that drip with sexuality, anger, confusion and fear. All assembled with a devil-may-care, “art of the mistake” philosophy to transcend its own self-consciousness.
A sexy canvas ready to be explored, Million Trillion Stars is a modern pop record that has everything: style and substance, fun and emotion, dance and ballad, organic instrumentation and metronomic electronic. With production backing from Mike Elizondo (Pink, Maroon 5, 50 Cent, Rilo Kiley), The Pharmacy (Crazy Town), and Martin Pradler (Mean Girls Soundtrack, 8 Mile Soundtrack) and Taryn’s creative executive direction, their sophomore effort exhibits the Mannings’ growth as musicians and artists with a cinematic flare for producing contagious soundscapes. Featuring hints of hip-pop, trip hop, dirty pop, soul, R&B and a DIY indie rock, BOOMKAT is hitting their stride with an eclectic mix and styles that creates their unique style.
From the success and momentum of their first single, the “Run Boy,” BOOMKAT’s second single “Stomp” is ready to turn up the heat by unleashing their catchy summer love anthem. “Stomp”, a vintage synth pop melody accompanied by soulful vocals, proves BOOMKAT’s first single wasn’t a stroke of luck. From the climatic toe-tapping introduction to the shrilling electric guitar break down, “Stomp” takes it’s listener on a bombastic musical journey infused with sexual frustration, much like summer vacation itself.
5 short years and 3 releases later, Bad Flirt has gone from lo-fi acoustic twee to sparkling hard pop that falls delicately between Norway's black metal legends Mayhem and UK shoegazers Lush.
The Montreal quartet’s latest disc Virgin Talk was produced by Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade) and they were recently hailed by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen as their favorite band. Virgin Talk received high praise from the media (including The Village Voice, The National Post, Myspace, Seventeen Magazine and Elle Magazine) and the band has toured extensively all over the country playing alongside such artists as The Kills, Paramore, Fucked Up and Mary Weiss of The Shangri Las...
Bad Flirt has recently relocated to LA to work on their new record and will be playing a free show on October 12 at the Silverlake Lounge.
We are happy to announce that the video for "Island" exists and is ready for your eyes.
The band's good friend Art Boonparn (who's done videos for The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Coldcave & The Silent League) managed to pretty accurately represent the spirit of the song by shooting hand held super 8 scenes in and around Brooklyn and mixing them together with archival war footage and found sound.
The whole thing feels more like a short film in 3 parts (a la Kurosawa) than a rock vid. We are pleased!
Montreal's Winter Gloves are set to release A Way To Celebrate, a new digital-only complement to their debut album, about a girl, which will be available from iTunes on October 6th at a special low price.
A Way To Celebrate is a reworking of the band's debut LP, about a girl, which included the song, "Invisible," ranked #17 as one of Esquire's "Top 50 Songs Every Man Should Be Listening To," and caused SPIN.com to call them a "hot Montreal band...wistful keyboard kitsch should please fans of Ra Ra Riot's tightly woven pop songs or Wolf Parade's more ambitious rambles."
The digital release is a collection of remixes, live versions, experiments with arrangements and everything that made sense in between, including a recording in a local train station in the band's hometown. Winter Gloves are also releasing their video for 'Party People', directed by Marie-Eve Lapointe and assisted by Vincent Chalifour, in support of their forthcoming tour.
Winter Gloves has spent the past year taking about a girl on the road across Canada and the US, touring alongside the likes of You Say Party! We Say Die! and Thunderheist, with a solid sprinkling of summer festivals thrown in for good measure. The shape-shifting that happens when you bring a song on the road is an evolution that the band wanted to document; A Way To Celebrate is an archive of this time on the road as much as it is a thanks to the band's new fans who have supported the original debut album.
Portugal. The Man's "DO YOU" MUSIC VIDEO JUST RELEASED!!!
Head to Portugal. The Man's website and experience what happens when the song "Do You" from album The Satanic Satanist comes to life on your computer screen.
Be sure to check out the stunning, animated sci-fi music video for "Flashing Red Light Means Go" from the UK indie-rock squad The Boxer Rebellion. Directed by Grant Berry & Nick Tarte, the video was created digitally, frame-by-frame, over an incredibly intense period of four weeks and is a fantastical moving image of futuristic travel we can only conceive in our most dizzying of dreams. Check it out below.
The Boxer Rebellion made headlines in January by becoming the first unsigned band in history to break the Billboard Top 100 Albums Chart on a digital-only release. "Union," the band's latest album, birthed a phenomenon when lead track, "Evacuate," became the first iTunes "Global Single of the Week," clocking up a staggering 560,000 downloads in seven days. On fanbase alone, the album knocked My Morning Jacket off the iTunes US Alternative Charts top spot, while also becoming an iTunes Top 5 album on both sides of the Atlantic ... all within 48 hours of release. Additionally, the band most recently made headlines again when they announced a groundbreaking partnership with HMV in the UK.
Swedish italo-disco artist Sally Shapiro is excited to release a brand new video for the first single, "Miracle," off her sophomore release, My Guilty Pleasure, out now on Paper Bag Records!
A little bit about the making of "Miracle" according to Sally and her producer Johan Agebjörn, "This music video is directed by Will Joines, whom we had the pleasure to shortly meet during our one and only (and short) DJ tour to North America. He photographed us during the appearance in New York and was really nice. We like his work so we had him to direct this music video together with the producer Gilana Lobel and a few more people."
Following on the success and critical acclaim of Disco Romance, My Guilty Pleasure, continues Sally's natural progression towards a blend of 80s-inspired italo disco and twee indie pop - melancholic yet hopeful, sweet yet danceable. The album takes influences from genres like trance, cosmic disco, acid, ambient and jazz while retaining that sweet disco romance you know and love. My Guilty Pleasure contains 9 tracks, including the singles "Miracle" and "Love in July," and is available now on CD and limited edition 180GRAM vinyl.
Here's a nice notice of a side project of Thomas Walsh of Pugwash.
Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy and Thomas Walsh of Pugwash have dared to shake the foundations of rock and roll: they have created a concept album all about cricket. And just in time for another historic England victory in the Ashes.
So why does it work? Their musical versatility means the album skips effortlessly from track to track. Hannon's superb lyrical ability and extensive vocabulary gives The Duckworth Lewis Method a sardonic cleverness while always remaining aware of the silliness of this project.
'Jiggery Pokery' is a Gilbert and Sullivan style ballad of Shane Warne's debut dismissal of Gatting: captivating, upbeat and uproarious. Even the instrumental 'Rain Stops Play' remains evocative of the rather silly sport. Synth-heavy 'The Coin Toss' is a cogent example of this album: piano-led, lyric-bursting pop with spoken word interludes. a personal favourite is 'Meeting Mr Miandad' which overflows with Beatles influence.
Monumental excitement and critical acclaim continues across the US for English folk-punk artist Frank Turner with the release of his new album, Poetry of the Deed, this past Tuesday.
The traveling troubadour's style of direct, heartfelt songwriting is captivating fans and critics alike, garnering Turner massive buzz and phenomenal press coverage including a riveting performance on CNN.com streamed to mainstream audiences throughout the world as well as earning the top spot on PasteMagazine.com's "16 Albums To Look Forward To This Fall."
Shaping up to be 2009's critical-darling, the fiery passion on Turner's albums translates live with spine tingling vigor and honesty.
"To start again, we're the lucky ones" opens "Shelter," the first track on People Are Soft, with the sound of a band reinventing itself. Philadelphia's The Swimmers are set to release People are Soft on November 3, 2009 via MAD Dragon Records (ADA), a towering, vulnerable sophomore album that is a debut in its own right.
Following 2008's Fighting Trees-The Swimmers' first release on MAD Dragon which garnered rave reviews from The Philadelphia Inquirer, Magnet, The Tripwire and Time Out Chicago, making their Artist to Watch and Top Ten Year End Polls-Steve and Krista Yutzy-Burkey, Scott French and Rick Sieber decided to make a clean break, build a home studio from the ground up and record an album entirely themselves. The result is intensely personal songwriting couched in distorted synthesizer hooks, crushed electric guitars and swelling reverb trails. "It was a very focused and isolated time. Scott and I traded back and forth, refining and affecting the mixes.I think we all journeyed pretty deep inside ourselves during the project," said lead singer/songwriter Steve. I'm including a link to a John Hughes tribute music video that was created by a fan - music for the song "What This World is Coming To" is synched to the images, followed by the track listing for the new album.
Songwriter/Musician Chuck Prophet and band travels to Mexico City to record his upcoming album, ¡Let Freedom Ring!.
Filmmaker Scott Compton and DP John Behrens went along for the ride armed with Canon 5D MkII HD SLR cameras.
Amid power outages, earthquakes, corrupt police and swine flu hysteria on CNN, Chuck and band managed to plug in and roll tape on a old-school rock record that takes no prisoners.
This trailer is on the upcoming documentary chronicling the adventure.
MIKE HERRERA’S TUMBLEDOWN have partnered with HOT TOPIC’S SHOCKHOUND internet site to premiere the new video for their single, “Butcher of San Antone”. The track is the second single from he bands self-titled debut album, released through End Sounds earlier this year.
Mike Herrera is best known as the front-man of MxPx, but has been writing country music since 1998, and claims some of the industry greats as his influences; such songwriting legends as Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Bill Monroe. MIKE HERRERA’S TUMBLEDOWN captures the punk rock energy of MxPx, while also displaying the soulful experiences of Herrera’s travels along the lonely, open road, coining their own unique pop-punk-a-billy sound.
Sticking to their DIY roots, the band teamed up with Dallas-based video director, Joe the Visualist (Joe Harris) to create their interpretation of a classic comic book from the 60's (Eerie Comics). Herrera illustrates the song as “the story of a vigilante priest out for revenge. It's a comic book, pulp-style story and is definitely set apart from our other songs. It's seedy and sleezy, just the way I like it. I think anyone can get into a story of murder and revenge. Don't you?”
DANCE GAVIN DANCE has released their first video in support for their 4th album Happiness (Rise Records). Here's a direct link to the video "Tree Village":
Austin four-piece The Octopus Project are excited to reveal their brand new video for "Wet Gold," one of the featured videos on their brand new Golden Beds Enhanced EP (Peek-A-Boo Records), which includes five different tunes and seven brand new videos! Josh Lambert in the band talks about the making of the video: "...it was wet and cold! We filmed it in Galveston a couple of months after the hurricane hit, so it was pretty devastated. The whole city (specifically the beach) was filled with debris and completely ripped up buildings -- totally creepy. There was a pretty gnarly fog that day as well, so it only added to the eeriness.
Making the video was a blast! Yvonne spent a couple of days learning semaphore and was spelling out "Wet Gold" when we filmed it. I've never been colder in my life. Standing in the ocean all day long in the middle of January wouldn't be first on my list of things to do in the future, but we had a ton of fun nonetheless!"
Kava Kava "Clarity" directed by Michael Slavens.
