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The 10 Best New Songs We Heard This Week: The National, Jay-Z

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday afternoon, which means that we’re resolutely ignoring the rain as we contemplate the weekend, and also looking back over the best new songs we heard this week. Over the last seven days, we’ve gotten all gloomily excited about the new National album, reminded ourselves that Jay-Z can still actually rap every so often, got all summery to new songs by Beaches and Woods, marveled at how beautiful the new Eluvium track is, enjoyed new stuff from Standish/Carlyon and Tin Trails, and more. All these tracks await you below — get streaming and/or downloading, readers! … Read More

Music

The 10 Best New Songs We Heard This Week: Joanna Newsom, Beaches

By Tom Hawking on

Over the last year or so, we’ve been spending our Friday mornings rounding up the best downloadable MP3s from around the web. Over that time, it’s become clear that the (legally) downloadable MP3 is in something of a decline — the advent of Soundcloud and Bandcamp has meant that bands are far more inclined to stream their work than offer it up for free, which is entirely fair enough, and it’s also meant that of late we’ve missed being able to share a whole bunch of new music that wasn’t downloadable. So from here on in, we’re sharing the best new songs we’ve heard over the course of the week, and offering them up for you to stream at your leisure. This inaugural edition features work from Joanna Newsom, Beaches, Dam-Funk, Motion Sickness of Time Travel, and plenty more. Happy Friday! … Read More

Music

10 MP3s You Need to Download for Free This Week: Angel Haze, El Perro Del Mar

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday, which means another installment of our regular roundup of downloadable MP3 goodness from around the web. (It also means we’re about to melt into a puddle of CMJ angst, but that’s another story.) Anyway, on the MP3 front, this week brings a new track and much awesomeness from Angel Haze, a dream remixer/remixee combination in Saint Etienne and El Perro Del Mar, free stuff from prolific producers Dâm-Funk and Zomby, Ty Segall “doing” the Velvet Underground, and the third edition of D’Eon’s excellent Music for Keyboards series. And more! Since all this action costs precisely nothing, what are you waiting for? All the download links await after the jump. … Read More

Music

A Selection of Great Duets We’d Love to See

By Tom Hawking on

As we’ve written here in the past, the duet is an inexact science — some of the collaborations that you’d think should have been roaring successes proved to be disastrous, and vice versa. We’re still on the fence as to which group the new St. Vincent/David Byrne collaboration Love This Giant, which is out today, falls into — but either way, the fact that two of our favorite artists have made a whole record together got us thinking about other dream duets we’d love to see. We’ve started the discussion with a bunch of suggestions. Who would you like to see in the studio together? … Read More

Music

10 Indie Musicians Who Would Make Great Pop Stars

By Tom Hawking on

Ariel Pink’s new album Mature Themes is out this week, and it’s as strange and idiosyncratic as ever, mixing killer pop songs and curious whimsy in roughly equal measures. Pink’s more pop-tastic moment have always led us to think that somewhere inside him was/is a huge international pop star just waiting to get out. (Whether Pink is inclined to let this inner pop star out is, of course, another matter entirely.) Anyway, either way, hearing Mature Themes got us thinking about other indie types who, in an ideal world, could/should be chart-destroying megastars. The lines are blurrier than ever these days, of course, and there have been plenty of genuine crossover acts drawn from the ranks of the indie world, if that term even means anything in 2012 — M83, Feist, even (whisper it quietly) Bon Iver. Who might be next? Read on. … Read More

Music

10 MP3s You Need to Download for Free This Week: Dam-Funk, Mountain Goats

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday, and we’re back with another installment of our regular roundup of downloadable MP3 goodness from around the web. The most notable piece of action this week is the return of Dam-Funk and his download-sharing ways, but there’s also the new Stars single, Mountain Goats doing the Weeds theme song, and Jason Lytle doing Talk Talk, several interesting remixes, the correct link to a new Thurston Moore track and various other goodness. In other words, there’s plenty of interesting sounds awaiting you after the jump, and since they won’t cost a penny or land you an RIAA lawsuit, as your attorneys we advise you to start downloading immediately. … Read More

Music

10 Rappers to Convert the Indie Purist in Your Life

By Tom Hawking on

One of the more pleasing developments of the 21st century has been the decline of musical tribalism — people are far less likely to be evangelistic about their choice of genre these days, and most people’s record collections encompass a healthy range of sounds. Having said that, some divides remain — in particular, any conversation that touches on hip hop usually gives rise to at least one proclamation along the lines of, “Oh, I don’t listen to that garbage — it’s all bitches and blunts and guns, etc etc.” The release of SpaceGhostPurrp’s debut album this week (as you might have read, he’s signed to 4AD) got us thinking about other rappers who might bridge the hip hop/guitar divide. We’ve made some suggestions after the jump, so next time you run into an anti-hip hop type, don’t just huff and puff — direct them to us! We’re here to help. … Read More

Music

10 Free MP3s You Need to Download This Week

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday, and we’re back with another installment of our regular roundup of downloadable MP3 goodness, both from around the web and from our own servers. This week there’s lots of spacey, ambient, atmospheric stuff to ease you into the weekend, along with a new song from the ever-prolific Dâm-Funk, a cracking track from new Flavorpill faves Light Asylum, a previously unreleased Joanna Newsom instrumental, and an entire mixtape from Titus Andronicus. In other words, there’s plenty of interesting sounds awaiting you after the jump, and since they won’t cost a penny or land you an RIAA lawsuit, as your attorneys we advise you to start downloading immediately. … Read More