Neon Indian - Pyschic Chasms
Out 10/13 on Lefse Records

Neon Indian - “Terminally Chill”

MySpace Brisbane, Australia’s most energetic pop band – The Grates – have finally inked a North American deal to release their second album Teeth Lost, Hearts Won on this side of the world. Considering how much fun their 2006 debut Gravity Won’t Get You High was, I found it confounding that the trio were at SxSW this year without a deal for their sophomore effort, released last August down under, especially after seeing their rhythmic gymnastic-infused set at Hot Freaks. But that’s been resolved, as Teeth Lost, Hearts Won will be getting a domestic release via Thirty Tigers on September 15.

There’s one of the tracks from the new record available to download below and you can get another by signing up to their mailing list.

MP3: The Grates – “Burn Bridges”
Video: The Grates – “Burn Bridges”
Video: The Grates – “Aw Yeah”
MySpace: The Grates

Ex-Concrete Victoria Bergsmann has completed her second album as Taken By Trees – East Of Eden will be released on September 8, more details at The Line Of Best Fit.

NPR offers up a session with Loney Dear.

Altsounds interviews The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart.

Drowned In Sound has an interview with The Twilight Sad. Forget The Night Ahead is out September 22.

Elvis Perkins In Dearland have a new video out, taken from their self-titled album.

Video: Elvis Perkins – “Chains, Chains, Chains”

Also with a new vid are Death Cab For Cutie. It comes from their recently-released The Open Door EP.

Video: Death Cab For Cutie – “Little Bribes”

A free and legal MP3 from Patrick Wolf’s The Bachelor, getting a North American release on August 11.

MP3: Patrick Wolf – “The Vulture”

Filter gets to know Howling Bells, whose Radio Wars will get a North American release on July 28.

Blurt has an interview with St Vincent’s Annie Clark. She is at the Horseshoe on August 8.

The Hidden Cameras
Out 9/22 on Arts & Crafts

Download a new MP3 from Origin:Orphan, titled “Walk On,” here, on the Arts & Crafts website.

Magnolia Electric Co. - Josephine
Out 7/21 on Secretly Canadian

Magnolia Electric Co. - “Little Sad Eyes”

Pre-order Josephine now and you’ll get a free copy of the limited-edition, 4-song 7″ It’s Made Me Cry.

The Vaselines
The Small Stakes, 2009

Faux Hoax - “Your Friends Will Carry You Home” Pastiche means many things. Okay so Faux Hoax's "Your Friends Will Carry You Home" sounds like a pastiche of the music of BARR. And Faux Hoax are themselves literally a pastiche - pasting together members of Gang of Four (Dave Allen), Menomena (Danny Seim), Tracker (John Askew) and in this case vocalist Adam Gnade. But life is a pastiche, an agglomeration of moments, most of them arbitrary, disconnected. "You will get drunk / and you will get sad / and they will sit with you on grey curbs under yellow streetlights / and they'll let you talk / your friends will carry you home / your friends will sleep with you once and you'll think of it often." Nothing inherent connects the getting-drunk and the thinking-of-him-often - it's only in the throughline of consciousness, will, reflection, story (or of songwriting). "Your Friends Will Carry You Home" offers life as pastiche, yes, but also collage, bricolage, a loose and ragged line of drums. [MySpace/buy]

Slaraffenland - “Away” Forget "Meet and Greet", the lead leaky MP3 from Slaraffenland's upcoming We're On Your Side; it's this track, released on a Hometapes sampler, that makes the best case for pre-orders, for love-letters, for sending Slaraffenland postcards reading WHO ARE YOU?. Burnished, melancholy, optimistic and forsaken; like a roll of film running back and forth behind a projector's lens. Handclaps, clarinet, horns, drums, piano, noise - without the National's self-sabotraging ennui, without Broken Social Scene's grassy haze. Slaraffenland make that perfect music for when summer disappears, vanishing under a string of black clouds. [website/label/buy other releases]

Reverie Sound Revue - “Off Rooftops”

R.E.M. - “Letter Never Sent” (Live in Chicago, 1984) Like most everything else in the R.E.M. catalog, I have already written about this song. The thing is, even if you’ve decided very long ago to like a piece of music, it may not mean very much until some aspect of it somehow resonates with the circumstances of your life. This is the case for “Letter Never Sent,” a perfectly lovely number that I had always classified as a relatively minor album track, and still kinda do — obviously, I think very highly of a great many R.E.M. compositions. Either way, listening through the bonus live record with the new reissue of Reckoning, the song caught me by surprise. “Letter Never Sent” has a light, sunny bop to it, which serves to understate the loneliness at its core. It’s a song about missing people, and wishing that people could just be with you whenever you want them around, even as you come and go as you please. The line that rings out for me the most is in the chorus: “Heaven is yours where I live.” Well, yes, of course it is! Even if it’s a bit condescending, it’s always true from your perspective. Come here and make me happy, and of course you’ll be happy too! Ha, maybe that’s why Michael is knock, knock, knocking on wood.

Buy it from Amazon.

Talbot Tagora - “Ichthus Hop” From the Seattle bands’ first release for Hardly Art, Lessons in the Woods or a City, out 7/21 (& now available for preorder).

The Black Heart Procession - “Rats” From Six, out 10/6 on Temporary Residence.