A nice, light, danceably upbeat number from the band Damn Right to play us into the weekend.

Originally from Baltimore, the electro pop band’s now based in Philly and seems to be hunkering down, focusing on their live set and the coming release of their new album, Frozen Sun, out May 19. Their sound seems to be growing from a nostalgic house-based electronic to a more pop, vocal-/hook-forward one from what we’re heard so far. Give their new single, “Halo”, a listen to see what we mean. It was evidently featured on the show Broad City? Which we hear is good but still have yet to check out.

You can listen to more and even download a few tracks on the band’s SoundCloud page. They’ll be playing the Chattanooga’s Riverbend Festival in June + the Silopanna Music Festival in Annapolis, MD in August, with other dates filling in as the year progresses, doubtless. 

Another sonic gift from NPR to follow up last week’s—First Listen is featuring the soon-to-be-released Nikki Nack from the always imaginative, always innovative Merrill Garbus, AKA  tUnE-yArDs. And, though the album retains her trademark glitchy, hyper-rhythmic, anthemic sound, the songs seem catchier and more accessible than ever.

Turns out, the pivot in musical direction is very much intentional. Of the shift in sound, Garbus told Pitchfork’s Jayson Greene last month:
“I really went all the way back to square one: I walked into an open public library and checked out Molly-Ann Leikin’s [1987] book How to Write a Hit Song. I learned that the chorus should hit in the first 30 seconds. That was a big one. And just a lot of really nuts-and-bolts stuff: ‘You need to respect your writing time, make a date with yourself and keep it.’ And she has great exercises for brainstorming: ‘Picture a red schoolhouse. Now write everything you can describing that red schoolhouse. Is there a boy playing basketball outside?’ I really needed to unlearn everything I had done so far.” She continues, explaining the desire for the shift—”I got kind of sick of myself. After hearing so much about yourself and your own music, you say, ‘I know it’s not all about me, so what is it all about?’ I had to go and figure that out. And I took voice lessons last spring—just learning about belting and how to do it healthily. My voice sounds different to me on this record.”

Even for those who’ve found tUnE-yArDs grating, maybe, or too harsh or even annoying in the past, we’d encourage you to give Nikki Nack a listen over at NPR, where they’re streaming the album in full. It sounds like a positive step in evolution for Garbus and one that’s resulted in a friendlier, popper sound that we’re loving.

The best example of that—the first single from the album, “Water Fountain”, which takes the traditionally quirky, previously less-accessable sound of tUnE-yArDs and turns it on it’s head while still staying true to its musical origins, ending up with a beautifully unique pop gem. It’s currently available as a free download (along with some other nice picks) from NPR’s Heavy Rotation.

Nikki Nack is due out May 6, available directly from tUnE-yArDs’ Web site + iTunes.

One of our favorite musical duos—Wye Oak—is set to release their fourth full-length album at month’s end and, at first listen, some of the change experienced by the two band members seems to be seeping into their style in slightly unexpected but not-at-all unwelcome ways.

I write ‘slightly’ unexpected because, the last time we caught the band live, as part of Prospect Park’s Celebrate Brooklyn series, they introduced a song with pre-recorded drums, (usual) drummer, Andy Stack, on keys, and front woman, Jenn Wasner on live bass as them “trying something new”.

Originally both based in Baltimore, Maryland, Stack moved to Portland and then Texas after the success of their prior album, Civilian, in 2011. That emotional space is audible in the music + song-writing and seems to give them what comes across as a natural place to which to evolve the band.

Indeed, up until now, the band’s relied on Wasner’s heavy guitar, beautifully dusky vocals, and great song-writing. The heavy reliance on the wash of the guitar both stylistically and as a base for the musical structure is nearly absent. But the latter two all-important aspects of the band’s sound—Jenn’s voice and writing—remain strong and, in places, shine even brighter than before. Having largely ditched the guitars, beautifully complex, syncopated rhythms on piano, keyboard, and bass provide a newly streamlined, cleaner platform to showcase the band’s most essential strengths.

It reminds me of a successful version of the change in sound for another long-time favorite band, Ra Ra Riot, who made a similar shift to a stark—though admittedly more poppy—electronic base with their last album, Beta Love. But, whereas that change seemed to sap the life out of the band, it only seems to have invigorated Wye Oak, turning the focus of the spotlight where it should be for them: the sincerity and emotion of the song-writing.

All that serves to say: Give it a listen. NPR currently has a full stream of the album, entitled Shriek, and you can watch the video for one of the many stand-out tracks, “The Tower”, below. The album’s available for pre-order via Merge records + iTunes.

Some words of wisdom from American author + environmentalist, Wendell Berry to commemorate this Earth Day:

“The soil if the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.”

– Wendell Berry,
The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

The words were passed on to us through the Hollywood Orchard, who celebrate Earth Day with a community pot luck, live musical performance of original work inspired by the orchard, and commemorative CD + hand-stitched booklet, pictured here. Last we heard, they had a few copies left—email them with inquires.

People are complicated. No one is any one thing and we change over time—we know this. And despite the best of intentions to reflect the reality of that, through an hour in conversion with singer-songwriter, Madi Diaz, one thing repeatedly springs to mind for me: Madi Daiz, above all else, is a story-teller.

Sitting outside of Intelligentsia Coffee in Silver Lake over two very intensely caffeinated iced coffees, Madi continually peppers our shop talk on the new record with stories of losing house keys in the rainy streets of New York, a series of movie posters someone re-designed using Comic Sans, and tales of the cities she’s called home most recently—Boston, Nashville, and, now, LA.

Austin’s South by Southwest is still fresh in her mind too. “It’s gotten soooo much bigger,” she says of the city-wide music festival. “It’s pretty bad. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful or negative. It’s still really fun. You know, the reason I went down there is because I really just wanted to see my friends. And be like—’Hey look, I’m still doing this. I do have a record coming out. I’m still playing music…. Tad-a!’  And I ran into so many people that I haven’t seen in years. Years. I mean, you can’t walk ten feet without high-fiving somebody.”

When asked to throw out some of the better, lesser-known bands she caught at SXSW, Madi names Canada’s Royal Canoe—who she’s opening for at The Satellite tomorrow—and Sydney’s Gang of Youths.

But with the festival expanding its brand over the past few years to encompass events in Vegas and recent concerns about safety and whether the festival’s grown too big for the city of Austin, I asked Madi to give her take on it all—is SXSW over?

“Okay, I’ve decided that this is the thing—It’s like the most fucking ridiculous obstacle course/marathon, and if you’re not shitty musician, you can still pull that off. Because you will either…you will fight or you’ll die…. Or you’ll fight and die…but you can still make it happen.”

She admits that, in general, festivals aren’t her thing though: “I don’t like festivals. They make me nervous. They’re too many people, they’re all…moving…at the same time…. At festivals it’s like, this guy’s tripping towards you and puking and, like, holding the hand of his girlfriend who’s, like, sitting on the ground eating a banana like the sky is falling.”

Plus, port-a-potties, you know?

For anyone who has yet to hear the music of Madi Diaz, depending on what era you hit her at, you’ll hear a fine balance of rootsy, folk-sinpired signer-songwriter stuff and straight-up, foot-tapping pop. Regardless of where particular songs or bodies of work hit on that spectrum, though, much like her personality, above all else, Madi’s work tells a story, and it’s always one with intelligent, undeniable hooks that keep you interested. Having been a fan of hers since first hearing her play with Keegan DeWitt, I was anxious to hear more about her coming full-length, due out later this year.

“It’s really different in that…I’m kinda letting myself go all the way there. I’ve been pretty reserved in my poppiness and textures…now it’s really lush and really true-sounding. And there are a couple of love songs, which is…different,” she explains, laughing. “Yeah, I started writing it when I was falling in love with my then boyfriend and wrote a slew of songs; I was feeling so good, I was like ‘This is crazy. I’ve never actually been light and happy, this is amazing.’ And then the shit hit the fan.” The result—a narrative that spans a relationship, from happy to sad to…done.

The exact release for the album’s still up in the air. “I’m pretty sure the rough album street date will be late August,” she says. “It definitely has summer vibes, but there is definitely a darkness to it. So I feel like it’s good for late summer/early fall.” Diaz plans to release one or two singles leading up to the album later this summer.

When asked why she feels like it’s still necessary to release a full album at all given the music scene, she responds right away—”Because I wanna tell my fucking story, man. Don’t cut me off. I love the idea of being commercially successful, I really do. I think that it is great and is obviously going to pay my rent. But at the same time, my favorite artists are people who have not started from that thought. They don’t conform to that thought. We’re artists, we’re in this to take a chance. So what else are we supposed to do?” She continues—”I definitely have written some of these songs to be universal because I do long for that human connection with my fans or with anybody—I hate the word ‘fans’; I feel like a douche bag saying it—But I do long for that connection with another person. So I do want to write something that is going to be palatable, but at the same time, I know that—being a fan myself of other artists—I would only want that person to express themselves at their truest.”

In addition to the new solo record, Diaz tells me of a new side project she’s doing under the moniker riothorse (photo, right, by Catie Laffoon).

“I started this side project band with one of my really good friends, Emily Green (Kissy Girls, Passion Pit). We kinda came together out here in the fall because we were both super-scorned women by bad boyfriends. And we’re finishing this four-song EP that we’ve been producing together.” She continues, describing how it compares to her solo work—”It’s not so much different as it’s…it’s just an art project. And it’s definitely girl vibes—it’s super-lady-time. We’re both singing in unison the whole time and just, like, really lush guitars. Kind of very haunting, spell-cast-y. As a musician right now, there’s so that I love sonically and that I think a lot of people love sonically and you can get at so much more of it than you used to be able to, that…it’s fun to wear different masks; it’s fun to try different things.”

Diaz is hoping to have the riot horse EP hit ay around the same time as her album, or as she puts it, “BLEH—This is everything! …Vomit on the world.” …in a nice way.

Madi Diaz plays The Satellite tomorrow night with Royal Canoe + Roses. Doors are at 830PM and tickets are $10. Her new album won’t be out until later this year, but check out her last two records in the meantime: We Threw Our Hearts in the Fire + Plastic Moon. The latter holds one of our all-time favorite tracks ever—the epically soaring “Let’s Go”.

Quick—someone buy me these gloves.

Evidently, you can add ‘inventor’ to Imogen Heap‘s CV.

Working with a team of developers and fellow musicians, the signer has helped to design the Mi.Mu gloves, which allow users to “more naturally engage” with computer software and control and create live music in a more exciting manner than, say, standing in front of a computer pushing buttons for an hour.

Watch Deezen’s exclusive interview with Heap in her London home below and read more about the gloves and their myriad uses on the Deezen and MINI Frontiers blog. You can find out more about Heap’s Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the gloves on her Web site.

This track hit our inbox this morning and we’re suddenly obsessed with it.

“XXVII” is the first official release of NYC-based Camille Corazón—solo electronic artist, bejeweled napper, and—we’re guessing—part-time model. Jest as we will, this song’s awesome and we hope it to be an accurate bellwether of musical excellence. Give it a go:

NYC—catch Corazón live at Gina Martynova‘s solo exhibition  7PM Thursday night, at BRISTLE + CRÈME—416 Third Ave + 30th. RSVP to rsvp@bristleandcreme.com.

Whether they know it or not, dedicated listeners of KCRW are likely already familiar with the songs of Monica Birkenes. Better known in the music world under her moniker, Mr Little Jeans, Birkenes creates catchy, breathy lyrical hooks over largely electronically driven pop songs that have a habit of getting stuck in your head in the most pleasant of ways.

We’ve been fans of Mr Little Jeans since last year, when we discovered her excellent single, “Oh Sailor”—one of our favorite songs of 2013 and a musical inspiration of sorts as we made our first trip from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.

Now, after much anticipation, Birkenes is releasing her debut full-length, with a show to celebrate the release tomorrow at LA’s Bootleg Theater. We got a chance to talk with her about the work that went into the album, get her tips for anyone visiting her native Norway, and find out what she likes about her new home, Los Angeles.

Listen to Yacht‘s remix of the first single from the album, “Good Mistake”, below, and read on.

raven + crow: Okay, so, first—the name. I read that it comes from Rushmore, Kumar Pallana’s character, right?

Monica Birkenes/Mr Little Jeans: That’s correct!

Were you a particularly big fan of his or is it more of a general Wes Anderson thing?

Who doesn’t love Wes Anderson? I’m a big fan but maybe not to the degree that most people would expect me to be. I’ve seen all of his movies and know about 3 quotes if that helps determine the level of my Wes Anderson fandom?

I think that’s a healthy level of fandom. So sad he died recently! …Pallana, not Anderson.

Very sad. But he sure made great use of his time here which is something to celebrate.

Well-put. And now that I’ve effectively started this interview off talking about death, let’s quickly change the subject—your debut full-length is coming out at long last—congratulations!

Thank you!

What was it like putting together a body of work so extensive like that?

I just saw it on I-tunes available for pre- order and had no idea how anxious it would make me feel. As it’s my first album, it took years just trying to get to the point where I could make the album I wanted to make, then some more years trying to figure out how to make it the best it could be, working with different producers/musicians and finding something that felt natural and felt like me. As far as songwriting goes, I’d only written a few songs before Mr Little Jeans, so it was something that had to be developed over time and trial and error. It’s been mine for such a long time, the thought of letting it go at this point is a strange thing.

But rewarding, I hope. It’s funny, we were talking recently with another artist who’s largely built her career to date on electronically released singles and free tracks and EPs as to whether full-length albums are still viable + necessary in this musical, commercial environment. What do you think? …I mean, I guess you’re pro- given the album coming out, but still…..

For me, it’s more of a romantic idea I’ve had since I was a kid and I think a lot of artists and record buyers still feel that way too. Whether it’s needed or not I don’t know. In a way it might have been better to release the songs as they got made, rather than store them up and then put them together in the end. It just feels very satisfying making an album. 

Yeah, we totally prefer buying full albums still and listening to start-to-finish. The narrative that’s presented, both musically and in terms of lyrical content, is just so much more rich and it’s nice to watch that evolve for an artists from album-to-album. We were glad to see “Oh Sailor” made the cut on the album. That was kind of our anthem as we drove cross-country this past August. Such a great song. Was it cool working with the kids form The Silverlake Conservatory of Music Youth Chorale? I feel like adding a youth chorus to an already good pop song just makes it all that much better—like all of Michael Angelakos’ work with Brooklyn’s PS 22 chorus on their first full-length.

“Oh Sailor” drove cross country with you? Amazing! I’m a big fan of throwing kids choirs in the mix. My favorite band doing that was probably Dead Mans Bones. It’s a little hidden gem of an album I think. And I totally ripped them off, going as far as using the same kids; which was a lot of fun—we had kids in the studio doing everything from spitting rhymes to puking in between takes.

Ew? Between that and the Arcade Fire song you do—which, again, we love—I feel like the album covers a lot of ground for you chronologically. Would you say it does so too creatively? Like, do you view the album more as a progressive look at you as you evolve as a musician or is it more of a snapshot of more singular time? …or is that an unnecessarily convoluted question destined to end in disaster?

It’s both. Creatively it’s been a huge learning curve which I feel is still ongoing and massive parts of that have definitely been documented on the album. At the same time each individual song takes me right back to the time of writing it. In lieu of a diary y’know—cringy but true!

Where does the album name come from—Pocketknife?

Thank you! It’s taken from a line in “Good Mistake”. It’s meant to be a good luck charm in a self-made luck kinda way. It might not make sense to anyone but me.

Oh, I like that a lot. So, I know you’re originally from Norway, correct?

Yes, sir.

Any tips on things to see or do for anyone visiting Norway?

The fjords and mountains on the west coast are no less than spectacular. You should also try some salty licorice while you’re there, it’s very scandinavian and a little shocking to anyone who isn’t.

Ooh, that sounds awesome. How long have you called LA home now?

Three to four years.

What’s your favorite thing about it here?

The mountains, the beach, the food, the amount of space, the music. It’s just wonderful.

Agreed! So, I very reluctantly bring this up, because we were there, so we know how painful it must have been for you, but I feel like the KCRW show you played on the Santa Monica Pier last year was cursed…like Macbeth-level cursed. For someone like me who has a lot less experience in the spotlight than you, I feel like I would have just crumbled under the pressure when everything started falling apart on the technical front and mics and PAs and instruments stopped working, but you handled it so well. How do you keep your cool in that kind of situation?

Thank you. I’m not sure how it came across on the outside, but I just wanted to cry. I knew what was about to happen when I went on stage. We never got the music working during the three hour long soundcheck and I knew it wasn’t all of a sudden gonna start working just because there were people there. Going off stage, Anne Litt (KCRW) was the first person to give me hug. I’d never met her before, but I started sobbing into her arms. Onwards and upwards?

Aw! That’s really heartbreaking, but yes—onwards and upwards! And good to hear Anne Litt was there for you—I’ve never met her, but she seems really nice. And you have what will doubtless be a far more smooth-sailing show Saturday at the Bootleg to celebrate the release of Pocketknife. Are you excited?

I’m excited! And a little scared. But I think whoever is gonna be there will be there because they like the music or at least have some kinda interest in it, so I have a feeling it might be a good night after all.

Totally. I feel like, working in the visual field, I’m always curious how much musical artists think about their visual aesthetic, if at all. Do you feel like you have a visual aesthetic that you bring to photo shoots or album artwork or even just live appearances?

I feel like I don’t, but it’s something I’m in the process of figuring out. I’ve been concentrating on the music part of things, but I think it’s time to step up the visual aspect. I very much know what I like and have a direction I’d like it to take it, but it’s been hard to execute so far. It’s a work in progress.

Something to look forward to for us then. Who have you been listening to a lot lately?

St Vincent + Beyonce.

Nice. And, finally, favorite tattoo?

My favorite tattoo belongs to Tim Anderson and is a drawing of a marshmellow captain on a ghostship. He designed it himself from a dream he had.

Dream tattoos are always the best. Thanks so much for talking with us—we’re huge fans and really excited for the new album and Bootleg show!

See you there!

Advance tickets to Mr Little Jeans’ album release at The Bootleg tomorrow night are sold out, but they may have a limited number of tickets available at the door, as space permits. You can buy her debut album, Pocketknife, via iTunes. You can watch her video for “Good Mistake”, directed by Ian + Cooper, below.

Inset photo by Drew McFadden.

Mr. Little Jeans “Good Mistake” from Ian & Cooper on Vimeo.

Brooklyn band, Augustines (nee We are Augustines), is, without a doubt, one of our favorite bands to come onto the scene in the past few years. From the start, we were drawn in by the gruffly beautiful sound of their music and the emotion-laid-bare in singer Billy McCarthy’s voice. We’ve written them up many, many times in this space, most recently just a few months ago as they debuted their sophomore, self-titled album.

We recently got a chance to catch up with one of the group’s two founders, song-writer Eric Sanderson (above, right), to talk about the new album; our mutual love of his current and our former neighborhood in Brooklyn, Carroll Gardens; and forming Augustines after the break-up of his and Billy’s former band, Pela.

“After Pela broke up…we had to really ask ourselves if we wanted to continue doing music or not, because we certainly didn’t have an opportunity” Erica told me. “So it was very much standing at the bottom of the mountain and asking ourselves if we wanted to go through the sacrifice…to start climbing. And it was just really simple; I realized that my goal—once I kind of lost Pela and lost the opportunity to do music, I really just wanted to be happy. I just wanted to get over the misery and get over the suffering and just focus on being and happy and trying to be the best person I could be. And I looked at my life—I took a long, long look at it, a very deep look—and I realized that…the thing that makes me most happy is music. So, even though per suing music is often very difficult, I realized at that moment that, for me to genuinely be happy at my core, that’s what I need to do.”

Eric went on to describe the transformative effect touring the band’s debut—Rise Ye Sunken Ships—had on the three of them and how that affected their sound and subject matter. 

Listen to track from their new album, Augustines, above. Our full conversation can be heard below. You can still stream the full album on our February post; buy it via iTunes, on CD via Amazon, or on vinyl at your favorite independent record store.

Photo by Chris Becker.

You’ve likely already heard about the documentary, Mistaken for Strangers. It started out as a standard rock-doc on one of our favorite bands, The National, created and conceived of by frontman Matt Berninger’s younger brother, Tom when he was asked to tour with the band in their crew.

But the story of the film—inextricably wrapped up in the relationship between the two brothers—evolved as it was being created by Tom and (skillfully) co-edited by Matt’s wife, Carin Besser. The end product is less about the Grammy-nominated band and more about the younger Berninger growing up in the shadow of his sibling’s success, from grade-school popularity to indie rock stardom.

We were able to attend the LA premiere last night—followed by a live performance from The National—and have to highly recommend the film. It’s smart, funny, and endearing in the end.

Watch the trailer for Mistaken for Strangers below. The movie can be ordered via the Web and iTunes and continues to hit the big screen around the US. New York—the IFC Center picks the movie up Friday. Check the film’s site for screenings elsewhere.

Above, Tom + Matt in our ‘hood, Beachwood Canyon! To the right, shots from our friend, Maureen Hoban, as Matt + Tom entered the audience during an encore and (awwww) hugged last night.

Below, a recent interview with Berninger the elder from Brian Ives at radio.com on Mistaken for Strangers, indie going mainstream, and the Grateful Dead tribute album the band is curating.

Yes. You read that right.