Cincinnati’s indie rappers WHY? are set to release Mumps, etc, the follow up to their 2009’s album Eskimo Snow.
Mumps, etc will hit stores on October 8th in Europe via City Slang and a day later in the US via Anticon.
The trio’s forthcoming full-length is described by the press release as “a meticulous work of morbid fascination and offbeat romanticism to easily rival the highlights of WHY?’s incendiary back catalogue”.
Ahead of the new album, WHY? released a six-track EP entitled Sod in the Seed, a couple of weeks ago. You can stream it in its entirety here.
To celebrate the new release, WHY? have just embarked on a huge North-American and European tour. You can check all the dates here.
The first taste from Mumps, etc is the brilliant opening track ‘Jonathan’s Hope’. Listen to it below.
My favourite dream pop “bunnies”, Sleep Party People, have released a video for ‘Gazing At The Moon”, the new single from their somophore album released last April. We Were Drifting On A Sad Song is out via Blood and Biscuits in the UK and Brine & Barnacles Records in the US.
The project led by multi-instrumentalist Brian Batz has also a British and German leg of tour dates throughout this month. Check all the dates and info here.
Now watch the video for ‘Gazing At The Moon’, directed by Jonny Sanders.
Brooklyn based guitar virtuoso Kaki King has announced the release of her sixth studio album. Glow, produced by D. James Goodwin, follows her widely acclaimed 2010’s Junior.
All instrumental and marking an artistic reboot for herself, Glow is a guitar record as King described. “This is the sound of a person playing guitar. Whatever additions we made, the fundamental of this record is still one person playing a guitar. That’s who I am.”
King added that Glow is “full of beautiful guitar songs accompanied by string quartet, bagpipes, low pillowy bass drum thuds, shakers galore, and a library of unique soundscapes that were created in the studio for each piece.”
The album is due out on October 9th via Velour Recordings and will be followed by a North American tour.
Whilst we wait for King to drop a cut from the upcoming album, check out a video from one of her performances last month, where she played ‘Bowen Island’, a new song off Glow.
Earlier this month, Dusted premiered a video to accompany ‘(Into the) Atmosphere’, the first dreamy single lifted from their recently released debut album Total Dust.
Now the duo of Holy Fuck’s Brian Borcherdt and Final Fantasy’s Leon Taheny are offering a new video for ‘There Somehow’, the album’s short and dark closing track.
Here’s what director Scott Cudmore said about the video:
“Brian sent me the Dusted record last year and I immediately fell in love with it. It stayed in my car for almost the entire year. Something about the sounds and textures on that record, I guess they made me think that they could complement images and sounds of my own. The subject matter of ‘There Somehow’ and the short length of it really made sense with this material. It’s a different kind of project – it’s not a music video for a ‘single’ but more of a little film collaboration between two existing works.”
German electronic veterans Mouse On Mars released their tenth full-length album Parastropics earlier this year via Monkeytown Records.
The duo of Jan St Werner and Andi Toma offered up yesterday ‘They Know Your Name’ as the new single off Parastropics. The single is available on a limited 7″ and it includes a brand new rework by Mouse On Mars themselves on the A-side and a remix by Machinedrum on the B-side. You can get it here.
Coinciding with the release, Mouse On Mars have unleashed a video for ‘They Know Your Name’. The video was edited by Pfadfinderei using footage from various biological cell studies. Mouse On Mars explained how it all happened:
“A few weeks ago, our French friend Charles Baroud (Laboratoire d’ Hydrodynamique (LadHyX) / Ecole Polytechnique) told us about his newest experiments: He is now able to color drops and stretch surfaces in a way that the colors don’t leak and the drop keeps its form, even if mixed with other fluids. Those experiments are used for cell biology research, but also create – as a side effect – really esthetic and crazy patterns. When Charles sent us a few clips of his experiments, we immediately thought that those images would match our track “They Know Your Name” perfectly. Charles then bought a high res camera (he, as the boss of his institution, is allowed to do so) and recorded some really cool video clips of the red drop, which we lovingly babtized “Steve Verlaine”. We then asked Berlin based visual artists Pfadfinderei to get this material to swing.”
There’s more thrilling news from the Mouse On Mars world. The pair will drop a new EP entitled Wow on November 2nd. The new effort includes collaborations with Vietnamese visual and performance artist Dao Anh Khanh and Argentinian punk rock band Las Kellies.
Whilst we wait for it to drop, check out the video for ‘They Know Your Name’ below.
A couple of days ago we reported on the Charity Subscription Series that Graveface Records is putting out. It consists of twelve 7″ and three 10″ singles from bands and artists like Serengati, Xiu Xiu, Mount Eerie, Mike Watt, Appleseed Cast, Shearwater and many more.
The first instalment from this series features contributions from Serengati with Tobacco and Advance Base, Mount Eerie and one my favourite artists, the Minneapolis born multi-instrumentalist and loop master Dosh.
His contribution to the series is the utterly amazing ‘From the House of Caesar’, which has just surfaced the web. Dosh chose Building Dignity as the charity to be given most of the proceeds from his 7″.
Brooklyn based guitar virtuoso 
Earlier this month
