Reader, we’re taking and the ball and running with it, as it were, building off the inadvertent maritime theme we laid out last week with the posting of the invite we designed for Oceana/Christie’s/Susan Rockefeller (below). Thus we bring you (drumroll, please)…Nautical Week!

That’s right, this week, we’ll be bringing you all these nautical.

Er. Maybe not all things nautical, more like…some things nautical. Like, five, maybe. Four if we’re pressed for time or there’s a Cosby Show marathon on or something.

First up this musical Monday—Cleveland, Ohio’s The Lighthouse and The Whaler. Though Lake Erie doesn’t necessarily conjure up images of great white whales and stories of hubris and flawed human souls on a journey to conquer the unconquerable, the band nonetheless takes its moniker from Melville’s classic tale, Moby Dick.

The sound of the band, however, strikes listeners as far less…heavy, let’s say. The music leaps around playfully and frontman Michael LoPresti’s falsetto yelp comes off as happily fey, drawing immediate comparisons to Ra Ra Riot‘s Wes Miles. Honestly, for anyone who’s slightly disappointed with what’s been heard of that band’s new, sans cello, electronic-heavy album, The Lighthouse and The Whaler may well be your cure…but then again, what band likes stark comparisons like that? Let’s leave it at: “They’re really good; you should give them a listen.”

“Prove it,” you say? You are demanding, Reader…but will do. Download + listen to their album’s title track—”This is an Adventure”—below. You like? Continue your downward scrolling, Reader, and check out the whole album, which you can buy digitally directly from the band on their bandcamp page or via the iTunes if that’s more your jam.

The band will be touring in 2013, supporting Kindness of Ravens fave, matt pond PA (you can read our 2010 interview with Mr. Pond if you’re curious), and the also awesome Jukebox the Ghost. They’ll be at Webster Hall February 8th and you, but find a full show listing on TL+TW’s Facebook page.

Alright, Reader, stay tuned for further posts of a most seaworthy nature. Extra credit to anyone who preps with this handy list of nautical terms. Our favorite—chock-a-block! As in, “Troy, that page layout is chock-a-block all to hell! Shake a leg and up your leading or I’ll give you a shot across the bows and may well have you walk the plank, lad!”

That was Admiral Katie saying all that, by the way.

This is an Adventure by The Lighthouse and the Whaler

Reader, I’d never call myself a hero. Much less a superhero. But—MARK MY WORDS—I think I may be developing super powers. No, I can’t leap over buildings or shoot destructive beams from my eyes or eat a lot (no, for real—there was a kid called Matter Eater Lad in DC comics in the 60s who just…ate a lot), but I believe I may be showing signs of precognitive dreaming.

Last night…get ready for this…I had a dream that LA’s Local Natives had a new album coming out. And that I wrote about a song from it. And now…IT’S FUCKING HAPPENING!

Holy shit, right? I mean, yes, when we last wrote about the band it was spring of 2010, so some new material by them is certainly well overdue as is…and yes, true, maybe I heard that the band’s sophomore full-length—Hummingbird—would be coming out in the new year and just lodged that away somewhere in my musical subconscious…and yes, I kind of control what I blog about, so that is kind of like saying “Hey buddy, I can tell the future: I’m about to smack you in the face” and then smacking some poor fellow in the face (fair warning though)…but I’d still like to think I might be the next New Mutant or some such thing. Visionem Nocte? Trivial Future-Telling Dream Man?

Eh. Beats Arm Fall Off Boy.

Anyway, be you a believer of the supernatural, Reader, or a naysayer + skeptic, I’ll at least wager—NAY, PREDICT!—that’ll you’ll really like this new track from one of our favorite west coast bands. Catchy, driving, heavily rhythmic, and sounding a bit more subdued and mature than their Gorilla Manor days, I’d say it bodes well for the new album, out January 29 on Frenchkiss/Infectious.

The band’ll be Europe-bound next week but then back in Cali to celebrate their album release with a couple shows at the end of January and then playing three back-to-back sold out shows in NYC at the top of February. You can find a full tour listing on the band’s site.

Alright, stay tuned for more predictions of musically mystic import! HUZZAH!

Man. Will you look at that, Reader. We’ve got nearly solid music posts all the way back to the beginning of October. It’s like we don’t even care about wonderful vegan recipes, or well-crafted design, or crazy animated GIFs of cats that just can’t handle it. It’s like we DON’T EVEN CARE!

PS—we totally care about all of those things.

Well, one more music article, just to keep with the regularity of our daily features, then we promise to get back to some solid design/art/food/small business shopping/cat writing.

Yannick Ilunga—AKA Petite Noir, born to an Angolan Mother and a Congolese Father and now based in Cape Town, South Africa—has got us brimming with anticipation for what’s to come. The 21-year-old is single-handedly writing intricate electronic music that he provides a solid base for using live instrumentation and deep, soulful baritone vocals.

Give this week’s Song—his dark + moody but equally catchy, “Till We Ghosts”—a listen to see what we mean. Then check out his video for “Disappear” (directed by South African, Travys Owen), below.Ilunga is currently on tour with a full band, opening up for one of our favorites—Foals—as they make their way across the UK. Fingers crossed he’ll make it stateside soon.

And now, Reader, we bring the post-CMJ week to a close, finding we’ve come full circle.

Monday, when we kicked this whole thing off after two weeks of radio silence and a massively debilitating natural disaster in the New York City area, we featured a Brooklyn band with its sites set on giving back to this city that’s given us all so much. Today, we’re doing the same.

Although Brooklyn’s People Get Ready are new to the music scene as a group, they’re made up of a whole bunch of notable creative types—Luke Fasano (ex-Yeasayer; far left), James Rickman (ex-Lizzie Trulie, ex-Slow Gherkin; far right), Jen Goma (A Sunny Day in Glasgow; second from the right). Steven Reker (second from the left) formed the group after moving to New York from Arizona and performing as a dancer + guitarist in David Byrne’s touring band, working as a composer for Yasuko Yokoshi‘s dance work, and choreographing for Miranda July‘s film, The Future. So yeah, PGR roll deep in the arts cred, both musical and performing. And it shows, both in the subject matter of their songs and in their live performances.

The band premiered a video for “Windy City” just yesterday via NPR’s All Songs Considered. Here’s what NPR’s Bob Boilen wrote about the band:“I saw forty shows during the CMJ Music Marathon this year, and the one by the Brooklyn-based band People Get Ready was by far the most creative. Part of what I love about the band is the way its members think outside the box…way outside the box. For brevity, I’ll describe People Get Ready, led by guitarist, dancer, and choreographer Steven Reker, as an indie-rock-performing-art-dance troupe. This is magical musical theater. In the carefully orchestrated live show I saw during CMJ, the video featured here was actually one of the props the band used. Picture this: Some of the group’s members stand off to the side of the stage making music while two other members “play” the Masonite flooring. They pull up floor panels, make them wobble and buckle and generally create cool sounds. At some point the panels fly into the air using hooks and ropes, and – bam! – projector lamps come on and play this very video on the panels.”The video mentioned (which you can watch below) is for the song “Windy City” and both the video and song itself are inspired by Cindy Sherman‘s Untitled Film Stills—a longtime favorite Sherman series of ours. As PGR’s Reker puts it:

“I spent a long time looking at those pictures, and then I got so into them, I mean really in to them. I found myself wanting to see things from the perspective of the characters she had made. So the song is basically me having this desire to take over her spot in the picture – forever. It’s a dialogue. I try to do it, it’s fine for a bit, but I end up getting super tired because I can’t hold the pose as long as she can. And then I imagine I’d rather be an inanimate object. Like I’d rather just be her dress or the glass that she’s holding, the match that she’s striking, the book she is getting off the shelf, and stuff like that. All these objects are endowed perfectly by her, the way she handles them. It’s very romantic to me, not in a lovey-dovey way at all but in the way the work feels…livable. It’s a livable world she made.”

The video was directed by Ty Flowers and shot on Governors Island, where the band held their residency this past summer. And yes, it features the band members dressed up in gold lamé + Statue of Liberty outfits, respectively.

Watch the video and click the player to give the infectious, jangley, upbeat “Windy City” a listen. If you like what you hear—which you really should if you’re not an cold, unfeeling robot—head over to the band’s bandcamp page to listen to the full album and buy the digital vesrion. You can grab the vinyl + CD over at Brassland, the artist-operated independent record label started by Alec Hanley Bemis and Aaron and Bryce Dessner of the National.

Where does the NYC disaster relief come in? People Get Ready are playing a show next Wednesday at Williamsburg’s Death by Audio—an intimate little space that I’m betting’ll be perfect for their performance—with Formica Man + Grooms. They’ll be using the show as an opportunity to collect donations for New York areas affected by the storm (the Rockaways, Staten Island, Coney Island, and Red Hook). Most needed items as of now are coats, hand warmers, diapers, baby food, blankets, sleeping bags and hypothermia blankets, batteries (D), carbon monoxide detectors, fold up chairs and tables, sternos, and catering equipment. They’ll be updating the list—which you can see on the event’s Facebook page—up until the day of the show.

Peace out, Reader, and let this first-class tune lead you into a wonderful weekend.

Photo by Jenn Nielsen.

Reader, if you’re a regular visitor to this little corner of the Internet, you know we have a running list of issues—pet peeves, let’s call them.

For instance, we—and let me be clear, when I say ‘we’ I mean more the Royal We, like when the Queen says ‘we.’ Actually, in general, when in doubt, you can assume that my behavioral patterns will usually follow those of Queen Elizabeth II.

Anyway, by way of example on the annoyances thing, we totally hate it when someone incorrectly corrects others on the ‘an historical’ thing. That’s totally the wrong  pronunciation unless you speak with an accent that omits the consonant sound of the ‘h’ and therefore need to add a consonant to the end of the indefinite article in order to separate the two words and enhance understanding. Also, maybe it’s not a good idea to let you kids ride their scooters around the very crowded, tiny Brooklyn market while you blithely browse the organic produce. Maybe. I don’t know.

But the gripe that most often rears its head to remind me how very steadily I am becoming a grumpy old man is a seemingly blatant disregard for aesthetic values. It comes up a lot for me—a bodega that’s attempting to appeal to me with a terribly shot photo of what looks like a green-tinged chicken sandwich; the new Brooklyn storefront that, while doing work to tutor kids that I’m sure is totally great, crowds their front display window with really terrible-looking signs and notices on sheets of paper; artists using food in any way in their work (totally grosses me out for some reason); Dr. Z ads. And yes, yes, I realize this reliably places me in the category of yuppie assholes who complain about things that are trivial—just take a look at the comments section of this article and you’ll see I’m well aware of how this conversation goes—but I’m graphic designer. It’s totally part of the job, right?

You might see where this is going, Reader, but another such example of a violent affront to my aesthetic senses are ‘bad’ band names. Archers of Loaf made some badass, totally groundbreaking music, but GOOD GOD, did they lose an ill-advised bet‽ And I was one of the biggest fans of their neighbors, Superchunk, but it took me a solid year or two in my high school days to be able to say that name without gagging. We’ve written about this admitted snobbery before—we’re still semi-convinced that we caused Gobble Gobble to change their name to Born Gold last year—and now it’s surfaced again.

The sign on the door of the downstairs stage at Pianos reading ‘J. Thoven’ during CMJ nearly kept me from entering the room. I somehow couldn’t get the image of a shades-wearing Beethoven-Snoopy hybrid out of my head and was a hair’s breadth away from turning right around and heading for the bar. I persevered though and, walking in mid-set, was, very sadly, immediately taken in by the band up on stage and the powerfully catchy, driving music they were churning out on stage. God dammit.

OC-based J. Thoven’s sound strikes me as pleasingly reminiscent of mid/late-90s emo—that’s like the second iteration of emo, after it was hardcore with singing instead of shouting and before it was mall rock played by guys with eyeliner. With the rapid rimshot percussion, melodic electric guitars, and rhythmic acoustic guitar, Jimmy Eat World‘s Clarity era comes to mind right off the bat. But the twang in frontman Jake Pappas’ raspy voice and vocal harmonies root the band’s songs in something a little more earnest and substantial than a 90s indie-emo throwback and their debut is excellent and compelling from beginning to end. So now, regrettably…tearfully, I must prepare myself to answer without wincing as friends and colleagues ask me ‘Hey, who is this band, they’re awesome?” It’s J. Thoven. For fuck’s sake, it’s J. Thoven.

Listen to and download the title track from their debut EP, City Maze, below and then check out their video for the superb song, “Wash It Won’t Make It Clean”. Though we’ll warn you Reader, if you, like us, are based in the northeast and staring down at snow-covered streets, the cheery scenes of the band running around sunny beaches and playing poolside might be a little tough to take. If you do watch it, be sure to stick with it until the end. There’s a killed old-school emo vocal break.

In all earnestness, J. Thoven seem like top-notch guys. They’re even giving away their entire EP for free. Download it on their site and keep an eye out for them on the road.

Photo by Matt Chenot.

What better way to celebrate the re-election of our Irish president—Mr. Barack O’Bama—than to feature a young up-and-coming band from Dublin.

Little Green Cars is another band we serendipitously saw play while waiting for someone else to hit the stage at CMJ a couple weeks ago. And despite looking like wee babes these youngsters can rock out (they’re actually all around 20 years old, but they started the band when they were a mere 15).

Even though the band hails from Ireland, their sound is decidedly + heavily influenced by traditionally American song-writing. Their songs range from folksy to emotively rootsy rock with multi-part harmonies and choral vocals. When we saw them, they actually brought the room to a dead silence with their mic check. Which is saying a lot when you’re talking about a crowd of jaded New Yorkers who have likely already seen twenty bands that day.

Listen to their single—”The John Wayne”—below and watch the just-released video for the song.

The band will be releasing their debut album—produced by Markus Dravs (Mumford + Sons, Arcade Fire, Coldplay)—early next year. In the meantime, you can purchase “The John Wayne” + it’s b-side, “Witching Hour,” over at iTunes.

Obama go Brách!

We know you might possibly have other things on your mind today, Reader, so we’ll keep this short and confine ourselves to a format you’re likely currently used to given the goings-on around the nation.

PROPOSED MUSICAL AMENDMENT NUMBER ONE (1): Relating to the listening of ‘noise-pop’ or ‘dream-pop’, proposing an amendment to the Current State of Listening to Some Other Thing or (Potentially) Nothing At All, to increase the tonal reference points of the listener and potential aural enjoyment of 2012 (Proposed by Act No. FM2012-258). To vote in favor of the proposed amendment, click the play button below ONCE AND ONLY ONCE OR YOUR CLICK WILL BE COUNTED AS A VOTE FOR MITT ROMNEY. Or pause the song.
 
PROPUESTA DE MODIFICACIÓN NÚMERO MUSICAL UN (1): Relativo a la escucha de ‘noise-pop’ o ‘dream-pop’, que propone una modificación de la situación actual de la Escucha de alguna otra cosa o (potencialmente) Nada en absoluto, para aumentar la puntos de referencia tonales de la escucha y el disfrute potencial auditivo de 2012 (propuesta por la Ley N º FM2012-258). Para votar a favor de la enmienda propuesta, haga clic en el botón de abajo una sola vez O SU CLICK SE CUENTA COMO UN VOTO PARA Mitt Romney. Es evidente que él es el diablo.

建議音樂修訂NUMBER ONE（1）：有關“噪音流行”或“夢想流行的英語聽力水平，提出一項修正案，聽一些其他的事情或（潛在的）什麼都沒有的現狀，以增加音調參考點的監聽器和潛在的聽覺享受2012號法令FM2012-258）要投贊成建議的修訂，請單擊下面的播放按鈕一次，只有一次或您的點擊會被計算為一票，羅姆尼（Mitt Romney）。很明顯，他是魔鬼。

We’d heard Brooklyn’s Field Mouse via OH MY ROCKNESS earlier this year but had yet to catch a show of theirs prior to CMJ. Live, the band comes off as wildly reminiscent of the early 90s noise-pop scene, reminding me alternately of the superb Pale Saints + early Velocity Girl, and sometimes sounding like a really nice hybrid of the two. The band’s core is made up of singer-guitarist, Rachel Browne, and guitarist, Andrew Futral, whose playing is sometimes more minimalistic scene-painting and really reminds me of this great mid-90s Richmond-VA-based band, Minnow.

Give their new track, “How Do You Know” a listen and, if you like it, pick it up in 7″ form over at Lefse Records. Twin Peaks fans—be sure to listen on below after the main track to hear the b-side, their dreamy cover of the show’s theme. Also below, the minimalist slo-mo video for their song, “Glass.” They’ll be playing a couple Brooklyn shows in the coming weeks too if you hunger for even more.

Ew. That ended on a weird note.

How Do You Know 7″ by Field Mouse

Holy fuck, Reader, what a couple of weeks that was.

We sincerely apologize for our prolonged radio silence. We initially only planned to take the week off after the illustrious College Media Journal Music Marathon two weeks ago, then, it turns out, a gigantic super-storn hell-beant on sinking New York City hit town and blogging about music + vegan food + artsy stuff swiftly struck us seriously ludicrous. We think the storm was totally somehow created by that same Super PAC that’s been airing all those anti-Obama ads that have suddenly hit the airwaves in the metropolitan area, but we don’t have any proof…YET!

We made it through the storm with just a few scrapes + minor bruises, namely a busted window in the design studio that was pushed in off of its frame and left precariously hanging over my work area, but clearly we got off easy when compared to residents of Red Hook, Staten Island, the Rockaways, and—sadly—many other neighborhoods and towns in the area.

We had also planned, post-CMJ, to have a week dedicated to the bands we had not featured in our previous pre-CMJ post (which you can still check out and listen through below, by the by); bands we either saw and unexpectedly loved or missed but heard were superb. We’ll still be doing that—though a week displaced—but we also thought it fitting to start things off with an appropriately gentle transition from the serious, sombre tones of flooding + tragedy + and all the stricken souls on the east coast…to articles about bands we like. Therefore, our first post-CMJ post is on Brooklyn band Buke + Gase, who we interviewed WAAAAAAY back in the spring of 2010 (check that out here).

The band just announced that they will be selling their appropriately named song “Hard Times” (along with its b-side “Blue Monday”) to benefit Red Hook Initiative, who has been working for the past week to organize relief efforts in the heavily hit neighborhood. As Arone + Aron of Buke + Gase put it:

“We used to call Red Hook, Brooklyn home, a neighborhood that’s been greatly damaged by Hurricane Sandy. To help support the recovery process, we are donating a song from our upcoming album. All proceeds from the purchase of this song over the next week will go directly to www.rhicenter.org. We wish the best to all who have been affected by the storm, and sending gratitude to those who are helping in any way they can.”

So start off the week right with some great music for a really great cause, Reader. “Hard Times” will be a track on Buke + Gase’s sophomore LP, General Dome, out January on Brassland.

“Hard Times” b/w “Blue Monday” to benefit Sandy relief in Red Hook by Buke and Gase

And for anyone who wants to lend a hand in the area, we highly recommend getting in touch with RHI—Katie + I volunteered with them last week and helped a kindly Red Hook family clear out and clean up their ravaged ground floor. There’s a lot of work to do down there still and RHI’s doing a superb job organizing efforts + gathering donations. Their Twitter feed is actually a great place to get real time updates on needs. Outside of Red Hook, the Gowanus Studio Space—166 7th Street, Brooklyn—is accepting donations to bring out to the Rockaways. You can take a look at their list of needs here, which they’ve been updating as they receive donations and new requests. Finally, our New York City Councilmemeber, Brad Lander, has accumulated a pretty comprehensive list of how to help all over NYC and you can also sign up to help out and find out about other New York needs at nycservice.org.

We’ll be back tomorrow with another new band we .

Band photo by Grant Cornett.

Alright, we’re a day late, but we’re certainly not a dollar short.

As promised, we’re giving you our top picks for bands we want to catch this week for New York’s 2012 CMJ Music Marathon—ten bands you may have yet to hear that we think you should check out, and can easily with tons of media links below and the chance to see almost every one of these bands in NYC in the next few days, in many cases for exactly zero clams.

Also, we by no means claim to be the be all end all authority on the one million shows going on this week/end; that’s Oh My Rockness. Highly recommend a perusing of their CMJ lists for a more detailed overview of the great music going on right now in New York.

But take a look at our curated list and give a listen.

//SEA WOLF// Rootsy, driving, folk-inspired indie rock from LA. Led by former NYU film school student Alex Brown Church, the full band will be playing the Audio Perv/Us vs Them showcase at Bowery Electric Thursday night ($10 but free beer 7-8PM) + Friday night at (le) poisson rouge ($15, no free beer, but cool venue), both times with pop-folksters Hey Marseilles who SO reind me of that 90’s group Poi Dog Pondering, which I sincerely mean in the most flattering of ways. You can listen a stand-out track from the stellar Sea Wolf album, Old World Romance, above and give the rest of the LP a listen on Church’s site.

//BORN RUFFIANS// The full band of Luke Lalonde—who we wrote up last week—treks down from the cold white north to share their hyper, jangley, catchy brand of indie pop with New York. They’ll playing a set at Brooklyn Bowl Friday night with the superb Free Energy (picture a band made up entirely of that Matthew McConaughey character from Dazed and Confused…in a good way) + Penguin Prison; a free showcase Saturday afternoon (330PM) at Pianos with the very cool Ava Luna (see below); and another free one Saturday night at Williamsburg’s Spike Hill with Denmark’s Choir of Young Believers and other fine bands. Click the banner above to check out “Hummingbird” from BR’s album Red, Yellow + Blue.

//WILD CUB// Nashville-based band we featured a couple months ago when they let us use their song, “Wild Light”, in that short film we did. Solid song-writing and catchy melodies infused with a little 80’s caribbean styling. Great, energetic live shows. You can read our previous band write-up and listen to “Wild Light” at our August post and hear more over at Wild Cub’s site. Wild Cub will be playing free shows Thursday afternoon at Rockwood Music Hall (245PM) and then down at Arlene’s Grocery on the LES that same day (450PM). In the meantime, enjoy the groove-tastic “Straight No Turns” from their debut album, Youth, which you can purchase via iTunes.

//BLESSED FEATHERS// Ex-Jehovah’s Witness flees Florida at 17, teaches himself guitar, and shacks up with a mid-western songstress to make bittersweet, intimate music that smacks of Americana? Sign me up. Donivan Berube + Jacquelyn Beaupre bring their beautiful, simple music to New York this week, where it will likely be shown vile things and taught how to ‘properly’ smoke crack on the street. Damn your corrupting touch, NYC! Catch them before they feel the devil’s embrace Wednesday night at Cake Shop with Communist Daughter (below); Thursday night at Bowery Electric with Brooklyn’s own Savoir Adore; Friday afternoon at the always crowded, always great Brooklyn Vegan Party at Public Assembly with Braids, Metz, Murals, and every other single-word-plural band you want to see; then somehow nearly simultaneously at a show at Pianos; and finally Saturday back over at Pianos upstairs with Born Ruffians, Ava Luna playing the downstairs showroom. All of those shows are free, so get to it. And check out the excellent “By Song Through The Americas” above, then stream and (if you like) download some other tracks from the band’s Soundcloud page below.

//MOON KING// It wouldn’t be a music festival without a buzz-y Canadian band. This year we have Moon King, a duo comprised of Dan Woodhead on vocals + drums (like Phil Collins or that guy with the weird hat from Jellyfish) and Maddy Wilde on vocals + guitars (like…most people in bands). They’re currently peddling their noise-pop-ish sound all around New York, first at a free show at Santos Party House Wednesday night; then Thursday night at Pianos ($10); over at Cameo Gallery in Williamsburg Friday afternoon for a free show; back at Pianos again Friday night for a pretty packed showcase from The Deli ($10); then also playing Arlene’s Grocery Friday night ($10) (they’ll be the two Canadians in masks running all over the Lower East Side with guitar + drums in tow); and finally opening for Small Black at Brooklyn Bowl Saturday night ($8).

//COMMUNIST DAUGHTER// Nice, solid, folk-inspired music from the midwest; 100% remind me of an American Of Monsters and Men (Icelandic band we really wanted to see going into South by Southwest last year and then sat directly in front of on our flight to Austin). They’ll be hitting up that Wednesday night show at Cake Shop with Blessed Feathers that we mentioned above (free; the two bands open up the showcase, so get there early); Arlene’s Grocery Friday afternoon ($10); …ahem…Wicked Willy’s in the West Village that night (I think it’s free? I really can’t tell, but be sure to avoid syphilis); and then The Living Room later on Friday night (1030PM; again, think it’s free, but could be wrong). Take a listen to “Not the Kid” and just try to tell me it doesn’t get stuck in your head in a Simon + Garfunkel kinda way. Head over to their Facebook BandPage to hear more recent work.

//DAUGHTER// Quiet, slow-tempoed, brooding music with strong vocals from front woman Elena Tonra. London-based Daughter (not to be confused with the more red Americans above) creates sadly sweet and sombre songs that bring you in. Daughter is opening for the Dum Dum Girls + The Walkmen at Terminal 5 Thursday night (so, if you haven’t heard about them yet, you will soon) and then playing a great sold out showcase Friday night at Mercury Lounge ($13). In the meantime, check out their song “Run”—out on 4AD as the b-side to their “Smother” single—and some older tracks via their Bandcamp page.

His Young Heart EP by Daughter

//NEIGHBORS// As Oh My Rockness puts it, Brooklyn’s Neighbors is a band that’s very hard to describe simply because their music is hard to compare to others’. It may be that they haven’t yet found their sound yet, but I don’t really care—it all sounds great to me. From tiny precious songs to more recent upbeat noisescapes, I love it all. Neighbors is just playing a showcase at WIlliamsburg’s Matchless Saturday afternoon (5PM) so far, but, being locals, they’ve already got some post-CMJ shows lined up for next week. Listen to August EP from 2011 below and then check out their new track, “Diamonds”, from their forthcoming debut LP.

August EP by Neighbors

//AVA LUNA// Sludgy, dark, electro-soul riddled with multi-part vocal harmonies. Comparisons to Dirty Projectors are inevitable and warranted, but Ava Luna’s glitchy electronics put them in another realm that makes us excited to see where they’ll go. First place they’re headed—Williamsburg’s out-of-the-way Ran Tea House Thursday night (845PM); Pianos Friday night ($10); back there Friday afternoon for that show with Born Ruffians we mentioned above (free); then over at 285 Kent Sunday afternoon to close the weekend out (free). Check out some of their impressive live sets above and then give their 8-track album, Ice Level, a listen below.

Ice Level by Ava Luna

//HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF// Soulful, twangy, powerfully sung songs from Hurray for the Riff Raff, nom de plume of 25-year-old Puerto Rican New-York-native, New-Orleans-transplant Alynda Lee Segarra. She’ll play with her backing band at Cake Shop Thursday evening (6PM; free) and then at St. Mark’s Lutheran Cathedral in Bushwick Saturday. Check out her live performance above and then give her other songs a listen below.

Now get out there and see some music, New York!

Note: Music posted to this site is kept online for a limited period of time out of fairness to the artists and, you know, our server. So if this is now an older post, the links may well be dead.

This week’s Song is brought to you by Luke Lalonde, frontman of the Canadian indie rock band, Born Ruffians.

Lalonde’s solo work—or the little bit we’ve heard so far—seems to strike a more contemplative, experimental chord than the jubilant rock of his day band and one that shows a great deal of musical depth from the artist. According to Lalonde:

“The ten-track album’s theme was originally centred around the notion of sound existing whether we do or not and our unique ability to interpret it and manipulate it.  But in the end the album ended up sprawling outward to narratives about gender confused couples, a man who hates his boyish looks so he cuts his face up, long distance relationships and rejection.”

The album was written + recorded in his downtime from the band from early 2010 to this past spring largely in Lalonde’s home and is due out October 30th. You can pre-order the CD and limited-edition 180-gram white vinyl via Paper Bag Records and catch Born Ruffians next week as part of the 2012 CMJ Music Marathon at Brooklyn Bowl + Spike Hill. That last one’s a free showcase.

In the meantime, enjoy this week’s Song, “Undone”—a vocal-forward number that winds and weaves with head-noddingy rhythmic drums and plucky guitars until it hits a sweet pop hook chorus. If you like it, you can stream the album opener, “Grand (Rhythymnals),” on Paper Bag’s SoundCloud page.

Top photo by Sibilla Calzolari.

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