Yeasayer – “Ambling Alp” From their new 12″, out 11/3 from Secretly Canadian.

At first I thought this wasn’t cleared to post (after all, they were asking for an e-mail address), but as SC themselves have now put it up on SecretlyCanadian.Com, seems like it’s ok. Download away!

Dum Dum Girls – “Don’t Talk To Me” (GG Allin Cover)

(via Great Pumpkin)

image source

DuneBuggy - “W Thing” Imagine you're me. It's two days before Hallowe'en, and you're in the dollar store. There's a CD there of "Hallowe'en Scary Sounds". It's got a shitty graphic on it that looks like it was designed by someone who had only ever read about H ween; like "cats, witches, orange and black, now get to work". It's a dollar, and it's a whole CD worth of stuff. You buy it, right? Of course you do. But then you get home, you had a long day so you forget it's in your bag until you pull it out, you put it on, and it's even lamer than you expected. It's a crappy weak organ and some intermittent moaning, some chain rattling, something that sounds like a plate smashing into mud, which I guess is scary. It's one 48-minute track, so you leave it on and giggle every so often while you carve a deformed pumpkin. But then. THEN. Buried in there, at about the 39-minute mark, is this pulpy gorgeous gem. Played by what sounds like a band that would call themselves Frankie Stein and the Halloweeners, with the vocals sounding like they're coming from behind the bathroom door, and the organ all naked and fat and too confident. It's a beautiful party costume Kingsmen dress-up travesty, it's just my thing today. [Buy]

Hollows - “Watch Out Sally” Imagine you're me. You're a girl, 15, with catholic overbearing parents. It's 1961, you're wearing secret make-up, and it's bowling night for all the coolest. You're not allowed out, because tomorrow is Sunday and you need to be ready for church in the morning. You pour your nightly tea down the bathroom sink, run the shower and slip out the second-story window. These are the moments. You scrape your wrist climbing down the tree, and you practically ruin your shoes from running across the field to the road. Socks dark with wet and sweating and heart racing, exploding, you meet Tim (big Tim, such a nice guy, just a friend though, he has a beard) and he drives you to bowling. You meet up with all these people who are just on the edge of being your friend and the feeling like anything could happen is the only thing you can see, it's all around you. Matt is there, he looks so handsome, he's on Tim's team, and they win the game, but you laugh and share looks. So what do you do? Remember, you're me. Well, if you're me, you stop Matt on the way to the soda counter, you touch lightly his fingers as you spin to face him, and say with all the devil in your eyes but all the saints in your voice, "I don't want to go home tonight." And you think, suddenly a scared and desperate animal, truly afraid of what will inevitably unfold from leaving the shower running and breaking the tea cup, if you don't take me, maybe Tim will. [site]

The Village Voice interviews singer-songwriter Mike Doughty.

About Twitter--you've said that writing in that 140-character format has changed your writing process. How would you compare writing Tweets to lyric writing?

I just dig having those constraints--I'm all about parameters. When I work, I try and set up parameters to work within just as a game to play with myself. A friend of mine says that Twitter is the CB radio of our time, and I totally agree. I don't know if it's gonna survive, because most people aren't that good at it.

The Louisville Courier-Journal profiles the Avett Brothers.

Describing the band is still something of a game, with fans and writers throwing darts at a list of cobbled-together styles: “indie-folk,” “alt-country,” “punk-folk” and the wholly unfortunate “grungegrass.” At the end of the day, the Avetts are simply very good songwriters with moments of brilliance that have the unmistakable clarity and stubbornness of truth.

The Measure explains how indie rock killed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

We've all known the day would come when things would get dicey for the Hall, and it's finally here. Right around the mid-80s, or 25 years ago, or the exact amount of time that needs to have passed since a band's debut in order for them to be eligible for induction, when hair-metal came along and ruined everything, it simply became cooler for rock bands to exist below the radar of the mainstream. With the exceptions of a period of a few years in the early 90s, with Pearl Jam and Nirvana, and then again a decade later with the White Stripes and Radiohead, all the best rock bands have been, for lack of a better term, indie rock bands.

Drowned in Sound interviews Gary Numan.

DCist interviews Trevor Anderson of the High Dials.

The War of the Wakening Phantoms seemed like the kind of psych-pop stuff that rock critics just eat up, but it somehow still seemed to fly below the radar, at least in the States. How do you think your last couple releases have been received?

Actually, that album got us quite a lot of attention from critics! I guess 4 years is an eternity in indie rock so it's understandable if it's obscure at the moment.The reality is, the world is just glutted with music. Everyone and their canary has a Myspace page. It's just hard to keep anyone's attention for long. But we do have pockets of loyal supporters. I'm not sure what would break us to a wider audience, as we are still very DIY. The world's softest sounding punk rock band! I have very modest goals, which is to continue to put these albums out and pay my rent.

Heeb interviews Yoni Wolf of Why?.

At The Skinny, Said the Gramophone's Sean Michaels talks about the Scottish music scene.

The Beatles' "Hey Jude" flowcharted.

NPR's Morning Edition interviews singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens.

Molina & Johnson – “Almost Let You In” Another track from the duo’s upcoming record, out 11/2 on Secretly Canadian.

last.fmUsually when you assemble a “supergroup”, you assemble top-notch artists for each conventional band position – kick-ass drummer from group A, shredmaster guitarist from group B, supreme bass-slapper from group C and a lead singer (assuming they’re not already one of A, B or C) whose usual bandmates are probably more than happy to get a break from and voila – a can’t-miss recipe that usually misses as often as it hits, if not more. Rarely, however, do you find multiple frontmen working together, with even the notion of managing egos and personalities enough to scare any right-thinking people away. The one notable exception being The Traveling Wilburys and the names involved there were so huge that it’s hard to imagine any of them really feeling insecure. Okay, maybe Jeff Lynne got tired of always being the last one to be named, but whatever.

While the principals of Monsters Of Folk – My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, M Ward and She & Him’s Matt Ward, Bright Eyes and The Mystic Valley Band’s Conor Oberst and Bright Eyes sideman and producer extraordinaire Mike Mogis – aren’t household names on the scale of the Wilburys, they are essentially superstars in the circles they run in. And while the first three’s getting together to tour as solo artists in 2004 made perfect sense, heading into the studio to craft a record of original material was less of a sure thing. After all – getting onstage to harmonize or tackle a cover is one thing, creating all new material together is quite another...

MP3: Monsters Of Folk – “Say Please”
Video: Monsters Of Folk – “The Right Place”
MySpace: Monsters Of Folk

Express Night Out and The Vermont Cynic chat with Annie Clark of St. Vincent.

Austinist talks to Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater about their forthcoming album The Golden Archipelago, tentatively set for a February 9 release.

Rolling Stone declares The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart to be a “breaking band”. Way to stay ahead of the curve, Rolling Stone.

The xx’s remix/cover of Florence & The Machine’s cover of Candi Staton has been given an official video, which is itself a remix of sorts of the official video of Florence’s version. Good luck sorting out the royalties on that.

Video: Florence & The Machine – “You’ve Got The Love” (The xx remix)
Video: Florence & The Machine – “You’ve Got The Love”

Ian McCulloch of Echo & The Bunnymen talks to Exclaim.

Radio Free Canuckistan has a fascinating conversation with to Stuart Berman about his Broken Social biography This Book Is Broken, and the past ten years in Canadian independent music in general.