Every day I get press releases from indie bands with new songs, albums and videos to hype. Here’s the latest batch:
• Dream-pop duo Beach House have not one but two offerings to share: 1) The official video for Drunk In LA (above), directed by Sonic Boom aka Peter Kember, who also co-produced their recent album 7, and 2) A remix of the song Black Car, also by Kember. SEZ THE PRESS RELEASE: “While mixing the record with Alan Moulder in London, we were out having dinner and Pete mentioned an idea for a video where the viewer is always looking up from the ground. This became the Drunk in LA video. When he sent it to us, we complimented and commented on the trippy, dreamlike nature of the video and he wrote that it was essentially just a day in his life … We have never had a remix, but we thought it would be cool if Pete did one. We really like the one he did for Black Car, because it feels like a different song, focused largely on voice and arpeggio. It feels like a poem this way, and the minimal treatment highlights the lonesome quality of the song.” See Drunk in LA above, and hear Black Car below:
• Rapper Lyrics Born gets personal on his new song Can’t Lose My Joy, which discusses his wife’s battle with lymphoma. SEZ THE PRESS RELEASE: “Unfortunately, one in three Americans are living with cancer, and my family is no different,” says Lyrics Born. “We kept my wife, Joyo Velarde’s 15 year battle with non-hodgkins lymphoma a secret from the public until now. Can’t Lose My Joy (f/Aloe Blacc) chronicles her being diagnosed at a time when we were working, touring, recording artists with our careers just beginning to blossom. In the spirit of National Lymphoma Awareness month & day, we hope this song from my forthcoming album Quite A Life, inspires you to keep pushing and staying optimistic. There is always hope.” Quite A Life comes out Sept. 14 on Mobile Home Recordings. Hear it here:
• Phoenix singer-songwriter and keyboardist Rachel Eckroth unveils a cover of David Bowie‘s Love is Lost, taken from her Oct. 19 release When It Falls. SEZ THE PRESS RELEASE: “Eckroth’s connection to Bowie on this new LP is a full circle, with Rachel initially starting to write the record shortly after the death of both Bowie and her own father, and co-production on the record by Bowie’s Blackstar bassist Tim Lefebvre — who also happens to be Eckroth’s husband.” Her album also features guitarists Derek Trucks and Doyle Bramhall II, plus drummers Matt Chamberlain, Gary Novak and Sterling Campbell, but the video is all her:
• Garage-rock oddball King Tuff (aka Kyle Thomas) releases a Peaking Lights remix of Raindrop Blue, the “preening funk jam” from his latest Sub Pop disc The Other. SEZ THE PRESS RELEASE: “I sent Raindrop Blue to Peaking Lights and they put it thru their astral deli slicer and projected it through a frosty prism out onto the hot floor of a Venusian nightclub.” That sounds a little like this:
• Experimental London duo audiobooks dish up a video for their exotic, pumping new track Dance Your Life Away, the next single from their Nov. 2 debut disc Now! (in a minute), out on Heavenly Recordings. SEZ THE PRESS RELEASE: “The London-based duo have developed a unique ability to conjure up magical aural snapshots that wallop you like bong hits. Each of their discombobulating observations comes stretched out over a series of discomfiting oscillations, like messages from the spirit world or pulp fictions found in a box at the end of your road or a crackling pop broadcast from a far-away galaxy.” Enjoy the trip:
• Irish electro-folk outfit Villagers reveal the new song Again, which appears on their Sept. 21 Domino release The Art Of Pretending To Swim. SEZ THE PRESS RELEASE: “The album’s opener, it belies its acoustically finger-picked origins as it builds steadily over a propulsive 808 kick drum, ultimately becoming a Moog-soaked epic of a tune and an exploration of self-renewal: ‘I’ve found again a place in my heart again / For God again in the form of Art again.’ ” Find it yourself:
• Fittingly, avant-garde Norwegian trio Supersilent don’t have much to say about their new track 14.7. The improvised slice of drone-jazz is, yes, the seventh track on their upcoming album 14, due Sept. 28 on Smalltown Supersound. Savor the quiet:
