Nickel Eye is the solo project of The Strokes' bassist Nikolai Fraiture. During The Strokes' hiatus, he collected a shoebox of poems and put them to music to create homey, minimalist folk-rock heavily influenced by some of his favorite artists, such as Neil Young, Frank Black, and Leonard Cohen.
The San Francisco freak folkers, regular riding buddies of Devendra Banhart, silence concerns about the genre--deemed precious by some--on new LP. The set of obscure late-hippie folk covers is utterly convincing: a dignified and noble bow from youths to elders.
Portland singer-songwriter M. Ward has adopted the lo-fi gothic-folk production style of Bonnie Prince Billy (and much of the latter's aching vocal vibrato), but while their tunes tend to occupy the mountains and the hills, Ward's are Main Street sing-alongs. These blues-and-gospel-accented ditties could have been made 80 years ago, though their brassy growl might have frightened the town elders.
If An Horse reminds you of Tegan and Sara, well, you've nailed it! Sara Quin pulled a few strings to help break the Australian duo, which is why we're getting to know them overseas. They'll be a key band to watch this year as they invade the indie-rock scene.
Today's answer to the Go-Gos, Electrocute are as adorable as their name, and their synth-pop songs reflect their young and sassy attitudes. Enlisting heavy-hitter producers like Junkie XL to their production mix, Electrocute is sure to be a favorite for bubble-gum smacking, pink-convertible-driving Valley girls this summer.
The first album from the Azure Ray singer/songwriter served confessional indie pop under a thick production varnish. That project was strong, but her solo material digs even deeper with catchy/cool hooks suitable for both the radio and casual headphone listening.
Combining revolutionary spirit and bottle-breaking sound, Living Things bring back their fury from Missouri with the release of "Habeas Corpus." The trio of brothers added new blood to the band on this album and the contributions from guitarist Cory Becker do well to increase the hard-hitting, melodic quality of their music. They don't scream as much to get their point across anymore, but still manage to lash out lyrically as these politically righteous post-punkers are known to do without apology.
You'll recognize his haunting voice from his acclaimed project as one-half of The Postal Service and hear traces of those melancholy beats he mastered as James Figurine. But all that started out 13 years ago when Jimmy Tamborello was Dntel. The last studio album under that moniker came out on Plug Research more than six years ago, but Tamborello's back with those calculated minimal beats, still waltzing drunkenly behind lethargic, unstrained vocals.
Where psych-rock meets psychosis; where ambient meets its pharmaceutical analogue Ambien--that's the cauldron in which this Atlanta quintet stews its sounds. Deerhunter makes an art-rock abstracted into something visceral, a swirling soup of jumbly guitars and medication revelations.
Justin Vernon comes by this project name--sorta-French for "good winter"--honestly, having cut his LP in the snowy isolation of rural Wisconsin. There's a reason we mythologize such outings. This is pristine lo-fi, run through with icy acoustic guitar and fragile vocals.
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