If you checked out the Keegan Gibbs post yesterday, you’re probably still humming that catchy as herpes song Most Wanted from Cults.  Why not download their whole three song EP for that trip to the beach this weekend in your banana hammock?

Download: Cults “Most Wanted”

Peep the new video for “I Wanna Be Your Telephone” from Jamie Lidell. Looks like it cost about $1.98 to make but entertaining nonetheless. Great song, scantily clad woman (SFW, for better/worse), lo fi goodness. Rock on.

Buy Jamie’s new album Compass on itunes.

I don’t know much about Mia Doi Todd, but I’m immediately interested in any and all work done by Michel Gondry. Once again Gondry doesn’t disappoint,  this time using masterful color design to achieve his quirky vision.  Aside from the new OK GO video, definitely my favorite video of the year thus far.

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Every year there are a couple bands that emerge, seemingly out of nowhere, that get the music blogs all hot and borthered like an un-neutered spaniel in the springtime. Tracks go viral, clumsy diatribes are composed, and all the band can do is ride the wave, make the best album they can, and release it with perfect timing. The cool thing about the internet is the band can truly come from anywhere, it has nothing to do with what record label they’re on, or if alternative radio spun their music incessantly. It’s rare form of good art reaching it’s audience without too many filters or obstructions. The main obstruction in fact is other bands- hard to tell in those early days, based on one or two songs, whether a band has the goods or if their lead singer happened to share a dorm room with someone who writes for Pitchfork now.

It’s early in ‘10, but one of those bands for this year appears to be Local Natives. Perhaps they are on my radar a little strongly because I remember getting tipped to them about 9 months ago and had an early eye on them. I am going to keep the frothing to the other animals in the blogosphere. I will simply mark my appreciation that their first video still maintains some mystery about the band. In marketing bands these days, everyone decides that artists need to open their closets and expose themselves in all their Flipcam glory, but just like you don’t need to see Stephon Marbury chow down on Vaseline, you don’t need to know every gory detail about your favorite new band’s proclivity to eating spicy Cheetos while pissing out of their van. So kudos to LN for making a video that doesn’t reveal much about the band. Mystique is a good thing. Ultimately it comes down to the song, and in this case they appear to have a natural feel for a good, unique hook. This is also a good thing.

So here’s the video, check it out and decide for yourself if you like the song without relying on other opinions (except mine, of course).

Some time ago, Kanye West proclaimed that Mr. Hudson was set to take over the music industry.  Needless to say, the jury is still out.  I know it’s out of style to complain about auto-tune, but if I wanted to hear a person sing like a cyborg, I’d download the latest app for my sex robot.

Download: Mr. Hudson feat. Kanye West “Anyone But Him”

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We love The Heavy over here. They performed for us a couple months ago in the peaceful confines of our backyard, which was a treat. Last night they performed on Letterman and provided a truly enlightened performance. Dave was so impressed that he asked the boys to play the song again. This appears to be the first time in Late Show history that this has occurred. Even the Times Square tourists in the audience seemed to to dig the band’s retro grooves. It’s a challenge to truly bring the house down on a late night TV show, especially if you are a relatively unknown band taking the stage. Here’s to hoping they don’t stay unknown for much longer. Check ‘em out and for heaven’s sake buy the band’s album!

The Heavy//VIMBY Backyard Session

British duo The Ting Tings performed on Saturday Night Live over the weekend, and while viewers let their quirky brand of funky pop into their living rooms, the band refused to reciprocate by telling us their name. Cute fashionista blonde lead singer can be quoted as singing “they call me Stacey, they call me her, they call me Jane…that’s not my name”, but no further details were released at press time. Repeated contact from Our Kitchen Sink’s headquarters to Ting Ting reps were not returned, but later in the show she implored us to “shut up and let [her] go”. Stay tuned for further developments.

Vampire Weekend, in all of their collared shirt glory, graced an enthusiastic LA crowd last night with what was billed as an “intimate performance” to celebrate the release of their fantastic new sophomore release Contra. Witnessing a band meeting or even exceeding the hype that has surrounded them since their songs burst onto the band weasel blogs in ‘07 is an infinitely gratifying experience. Behold!- a band that does exactly what it wants from the get-go, crafting a sound and look completely distinct amongst their alt rock peers. There has been a lot of chatter, most of the mindless variety, about the death of the album as an art form, with the suggestion that bands should just post their songs for free and keep their fans satiated with a steady flow of new music. This is utter B.S.- say what you want about the decline of album sales, but a well crafted collection of songs created by a talented artist is still the best way to consume music. I have heard some great analogies comparing Contra to the band’s eponymous debut. In his review for Rolling Stone, Will Dana writes “If Vampire Weekend was Rushmore, Contra is their Royal Tenenbaums: brainy, confident and generally awesome.” Nice one. I have also heard the two albums linked to Paul Simon’s Graceland and Rhythm Of The Saints. Here I offer another analogy- the first two Vampire Weekend albums are most akin to Talking Heads ‘77 and their follow up More Songs About Buildings And Food. Like ‘77, the VW debut had the urgency of a young band recording on the quick, while the follow up retains much of that energy but elaborates on it, with the benefit of better recording conditions and the experience of touring for three straight years. To be honest I just noticed that Spin also made this analogy, proving the challenge of having an original thought on the crowded internet and that perhaps great-ish minds think alike.

The most compelling element of this band is how they can be both young and mature, immediate yet knowledgeable, rich white kids inspired by music performed by poor ethnic folks. Seeing them for the first time at the Echo in ‘07 before the first album dropped felt like what it must have felt like seeing the Talking Heads at CBGBs or REM at the 40 Watt Club, but whereas CBGBs or the 40 Watt probably had that feeling of seeing a great undiscovered band in their hometown before the world outside caught on, these days the internet replaces that provincial quality. After all, the Echo in Silverlake wasn’t the home base for Vampire Weekend. Now that they have reached a wider audience (including my 6 year old daughter who grooves to their tracks in the backseat of my car on a regular basis), the vibe of their show is more familiar, where the audience is not waiting for them to prove themselves but rather is an active participant in the festivities. Drawing equally from both albums (9 songs performed from each), the band jumped from the new stuff to the old stuff with equal passion, and all of the music went over tremendously. “Cousins” has that inescapable catchiness that “A-Punk” delivered the first time around, but many of the new songs explore territory they hadn’t treaded previously. This was most distinctly exemplified during back to back new tracks “Taxi Cab” and “Diplomat’s Son” which took on a trippy dub-like quality. A simple trio of songs for the encore- “Horchata”, “Mansard Roof” and “Walcott”- left their fans with the feeling that one of the previous decades most compelling new bands will be a leader as this new decade sorts out its infancy. Here’s to hoping that other new bands follow Vampire Weekend’s lead and do nothing like them. After all, once it’s been done, there’s no reason to do it again. Or as David Byrne once put it “Say something once, why say it again?”

SETLIST:
“White Sky”
“Holiday”
“Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”
“I Stand Corrected”
“M79″
“California English”
“Cousins”
“Run”
“A-Punk”
“One (Blake’s Got A New Face)”
“Taxi Cab”
“Diplomat’s Son”
“Campus”
“Oxford Comma”
“Giving Up The Gun”
“Horchata”
“Mansard Roof”
“Walcott”

Setlist and photo courtesy Spin.
Buy Contra on itunes.

Pitchfork put together a list of what their staff deem to be the best songs of 2009.  I would have liked to put together a list of my own, but my pants aren’t nearly tight or distressed enough to cover so many genres.  A definite MUST SEE for anyone looking to expand their musical horizons.

One of the classic character actors in recent memory, Steve Buscemi, stars in Saint John of Las Vegas. Not surprisingly, Buscemi plays a down on his luck compulsive gambler who’s forced to take a square job at a local insurance company. Shit happens. Hilarity ensues. Buscemi gets stuck in a wood chipper.  This loser looks like a definite winner.