What ever happened to simple song writing? The kind of stuff that made every rock act of the 80's and early 90's appealing, at least in the mainstream. The chord progressions were vaguely predictable, if not familiar and comfortable, and the vocals guided by sincerity more than irony. Today, we search so hard for the guys banging on pots and pans, ripping vocal chords and making faces, we forget to find the songs that make us remember what we liked when we were kids. Here to give us a little bit of both worlds is Beat Radio.

It's amazing how far eight legs can take a project, all the way from Texas to Lollapalooza to the Pacific Ocean. Now the Texas based rock act that "suggest technology just might save us after all" is touring the West coast, starting at Chicago's most infamous festival.

We're not surprised that We Are Scientists have a new video involving werewolves, cops, and zaniness. After all, they love to get crazy with animals. We are surprised, however, that despite building tension, it does not involve some sort of monster chase. Regardless, here is some relief for anyone who loves humor, and hates waiting for new WAS vids: check out "Impatience."

Photos by Melissa Rosenthal
Another wet, hot, American pool party... rain couldn't keep the kids away, and no dark clouds could hover over the great sets from Ting Tings, Black Moth Super Rainbow, and of course, MGMT. Check out the pics from this weekends McCarren Park bash.

In 2007 a brief digital EP entitled Wizard of Ahhhs was released, to much acclaim from, yes, you guessed it, the blogs. Everyone and their sister was chanting "he's got two left feet and he bites my moves," and it was good. Black Kids, the rag-tag bunch from Jacksonville, knew how to make us dance, even with terrible production and absolutely no label support. Since then, lots of paper has been signed, lots of studio time has been bought, and the end result are the raw, grainy tracks once heard for free all waxed, polished, and passed off as something sellable. Are Black Kids part of the next wave of successful major label pop? Or are they a hyped up sucker-punch, nothing more than another false sense of success? Is this a "partie," or simply just traumatic?

photos by Stefanie Giglio. See more photos HERE.
These days, there’s plenty the modern, semi-experimental side of indie rock seems obsessed with. Songs that fearlessly plunge their way forward, regardless how many jarring twists and turns they take along the way…endless amounts of instrumentation piled up for new and exotic sounds and textures…genre after genre, strained for unique bits of window dressing; bands like Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, and Yeasayer offer their audiences robust blends of experimental artistry. Though Philadelphia’s Pattern is Movement certainly offer plenty of these characteristics, their music proves originality can also be the product of a more stripped down approach. In this performance from the After the Jump Festival, Pattern is Movement prove it’s the product of brawny, firecracker drum beats, imaginative keyboard swells, and spooked out vocals that aimlessly glide their way wherever the moment takes them.

For all you vinyl-addicts out there, itching to spin some LP's the way music used to be, without abandoning your ipod to the bottom of a heap of unused gadgets, fear not: music merchant Insound has all your favorite indie LP needs, with a special deal: buy the Vinyl, and instantly get the MP3's for free.

Minutes off their signing with Barsuk, Ra Ra Riot is ready with their debut full length The Rhumb Line, out on August 19th. "Dying is Fine," a cut from the new album, is available for free download as well on Myspace.

Rock act Birdmonster wants to update you on their new album, website, and shows. Basically, everything.

Everyones favorite french take-out (or take away, as those crazy Europeans call it) is les concerts à emporter, and the guys are back with some videos from Philly alternative indie rockers Man Man.

One of our new favorite up-and-comers, The Windupdeads has released a new acoustic track on their website for free download. It's the track that made them somewhat known on the TV show Gossip Girls. It's called "Reverse of Shade."

Aussie label mates Cut Copy and The Presets are teaming up this fall to stomp across North America to the beat of their own brand of electronic. The tour is to support their current releases In Ghost Colours and Apocalypso (respectively).

Or is it, Ben Folds is "way too normal?" We guess we'll find out, come September. Way To Normal is the new album from Folds, who has earned himself a style moniker and a loyal following of fans who chant his piano-twinkling sing-alongs. However, we could see Ben in a whole new, expressive light; with Dennis Herring producing (Elvis Costello, Modest Mouse, The Hives), as well as guest vocals from Regina Spektor. The release date is set for September 30th.

The Canon Logic are planning an August residency here in NY, playing once a week at Pianos and starting at Mercury Lounge. You can see them four times! And knowing their live show, you might want to. They played a solid set in NYC a few weeks ago, and we really enjoyed it.

California popsters The Morning Benders are taking a short break from touring, in between assisting The Kooks and We Are Scientists and their future dates with Ra Ra Riot. Luckily for us, that means new content... in the form of some of their favorite songs. They've posted an entire albums worth of covers on their blog, entitled The Bedroom Covers.

Pictures by Melissa Rosenthal
Sweat-inducing heat couldn't keep the crowds away from Coney Island, whose potential last year of existing couldn't slip away without one last Siren Fest. This is assuming that Kevin Drew's final words of caution were based on fact... warning the crowd to keep the spirit of Coney Island alive, vote for Obama, etc. In any event this was the tail end of a day of great music, huge crowds, drinking, and dancing.

Pictures by Melissa Rosenthal
The infamous (might we add free) NYC "Pool Parties" continue at McCarren Park Pool in Brooklyn, with another great show by headlining band Liars.

Montreal is cranking out music like it's the new number one Canadian export (and let's face it, the product is in demand). Even luckier for us, US label Saddle Creek is picking up Land of Talk, and planning to release their new record, entitled Some Are Lakes.

It's pretty straight-forward guys. The first twenty seconds lays it out:

"Me and my friends are like the drums on "Lust for Life”/
We pound it out on floor toms/
Our psalms are sing-along songs"

What more do you need to know, other than Craig Finn and "his friends" have pulled it off again. New classic rock.

On Anna Ternheim’s American debut Halfway to Fivepoints (Decca) fans with discerning musical tastes may notice a couple immediate objections upon first inspection. 1) There is a rather major kind of record label staring back at you from the cover; a definite red flag for many fans of independent rock. 2) These songs could very easily end up on an episode of One Tree Hill. That’s right…I said One Tree Hill!

"Original" is probably the most overused word in the music industry right now, so much so that most 'unique' bands are just more of the same slop we digest on a daily basis, with a different name (and the same flavor). Always a fan of the raw, unmixed, guitar driven indie pop song that no one's ever heard of, we're constantly on the hunt for freshness, often failing miserably. Sometimes, it just plops into our open ears. Lets hope we don't have a heart attack before we hear more from Cardiac Party, because they might just put the sizzle back in buzz band.

Everyone's favorite booding midwestern sort-of-pretty boy, Conor Oberst, is coming out with an album... his first solo release in thirteen years (lucky number?) It's coming out on August 5th. In the meantime, we might have a bit of free sample for you...

Most people barely notice the ten minutes they spend in Delaware while traveling south, but perhaps if they slowed down they'd notice the gem of an indie pop band that was born there. But they won't be there for long... now they've signed to Park The Van Records (who also put out some heavy hitters like Dr. Dog). To which we say, "nice and nicely done..."

photos by Stefanie Giglio. See more photos HERE.
Jersey – say what you will about the Garden State, but you’d be amiss to dismiss the states’ impact on popular music. From classic artists like Bruce Springsteen, The Misfits, and even Bon Jovi, to more contemporary acts like My Chemical Romance and The Wrens; young guitar slingers have plenty of local history to pick apart when deciding who to take cues from. Rather than declare their allegiances for one particular artist/genre over another, Glen Rock’s Titus Andronicus apparently chose to plow right through the whole lot. Armed with up to four guitars at a time, this six-piece performance pairs lyrics swamped in boozy angst and attitude with a thrashy brand of devastating blues rock. Not exactly pretty, but that’s just the point. Titus Andronicus rather wallop After the Jump with their rusty, ragged, yet decidedly regional, Jersey rock.

photos by Stefanie Giglio. See more photos HERE.
Baeble has headed out of town before. Philly, Austin, LA…you know these places. But what do you know about Asbury Park NJ – other than it being Springsteen’s spawning grounds? I’m guessing not much. Neither did we. So on Tuesday we loaded up our ride, braved the Holland Tunnel traffic, and made the 50 odd mile trek to the sleepy beach community. And what did we find? A bowling alley… Yes, that’s right. We drove 50 miles for a bowling alley. BUT! Asbury Lanes is no ordinary pin house. No…it’s famously restored with plenty of retro-chic style to spare. And the best part? There’s a stage sitting directly in the middle of it all…a perfect concert venue for catching cosmo-popping Missourians Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin do what they do.

Picking apart the sonic make-up of the Aussie born, New York bred band The Kin doesn’t exactly reveal much to take stock in. Two brothers, both equally accomplished singers in their own right, trading equal lines of verse and chorus over a relatively simple sonic palette of acoustic guitar and electric piano (though other contributors do contribute other odds and ends); such a modest make up certainly sounds somewhat underwhelming on paper. But it’s what Isaac and Thorry Koren do with such basic elements that are most impressive, resulting in a memorable breed of pop music that is sweet, nostalgic, and absolutely romantic all at once.

Brooklyn based singer-songwriter warbling vocalist Kevin Devine is back with a new 7" release on Academy Fight Song Records. It's produced by Rob Schnapf, and it's called Another Bag of Bones.

Remember our nod to down-under singer/songwriter Lenka? Well, we got our hands on some pretty nifty cuts of hers, including a cover of "Gravity Rides Everything," and a grainy raw number called "Like A Song," all recorded in the middle of the woods of Woodstock, NY.

Earlier this year, the duo of Alex Turner, front-man of The Artic Monkeys and Miles Ford, lead singer of The Rascals announced they would be known as The Last Shadow Puppets. Later, in April, The Age of the Understatement, their first album, dropped. Now the side project seems to be soaring to new heights. The British rockers crank out tunes that are reminiscent of their parent bands, as well as classic English pop-rock. Definitely a band to watch for the coming year.

It's not often that a band infamous for shocking and screeching, making noise and taking names, will ever meet you halfway. And yet, the LA kings of ambient confusion have allowed their strange yells, loud treble outbursts, and tribal drums to be stripped and remixed to appeal to a more mainstream audience. Mind you, "more mainstream" means a person still willing to listen to some of the insanity, with scattered bass thumps and synth pads. A handful of the guest remixers even chose to include less HEALTH and more beat, but whatever the combination, the end result is something that you might actually be able to spin at a social gathering, without hard drugs.

...the label, that is. Canadien singer-songwriter Gentleman Reg (a.k.a Reg Vermue) has signed with Canadien label Arts & Crafts. We all love stuff coming out of Canada these days, and GR is no different: refreshing indie-pop, with jang-ly guitars, tambourines, and tunes on the cusp of radio-friendly without being too top-40 for the scene.

For fans of Euro-Pop, or Sexuality (his latest album), French pop act Sebastien Tellier is jumping the pond and heading to our neck of the woods... and we've got tickets for you, quick-fingered reader.

photos by Stefanie Giglio. See more photos HERE.
When most bands look to their instruments, they do so with certain sonic expectations. ''This is a guitar, you strum chords in a highly organized way, and suddenly a song is born''. They are the absolute masters of their craft, skillfully guiding their instruments to the places they need to go. HEALTH – LA’s current kings of noise – on the other hand, seem the type of combustible crew more prone to letting their instruments guide them wherever they decide. Sure, the band can fine tune the tone and timbre, but in the end, they are slave to the glorious noise they’ve built their steady reputation on.

photos by Melissa Rosenthal. See more photos HERE.
We’ve cooled off, knocked our heads back on straight, and recovered from the sun stroke. Sounds pretty fierce I know, but well worth the footage we walked away with from JellyNYC's Pool Party at McCarren Park this past Sunday. To call the bill a bit of a monster - well, I can't say it really does the show any justice. I'm just not sure what adjective one would use to adequately describe a lineup that featured our favorite new electro-rocking Brits The Whip, Brooklyn party punkers Matt & Kim (and the 20 or so members from the Rude Mechanical Orchestra that joined them), and indie rock legends The Breeders.

“There’s something about this place… I feel like we are some sort of revolutionary group.” These words, said by Fleet Foxes front man Robin Pecknold, pretty much set the tone for the night in Union Hall last Thursday. Just picture it: a headlining group that was nothing short of conversational and a small room (that, according to Robin, was straight out of the last scene of 'There Will Be Blood') packed with around 150 people also eager to chat about everything from Seattle to tote bags to hair product. Well, it might not have been much of a revolutionary group, but it was one of the most personal concert experiences any music lover could ever hope to have.

No one should be surprised to discover that at the core of this band is a man named Van Pierszalowski, who every summer, works on his fathers commercial salmon fishing boat on Kodiak Island in Alaska (dubbed The Shawnee). And a woman, named Cambria Goodwin, who used to live in the coastal town she shares her name with. These things are ingrained, even screaming, at the heart of this record. Without them, it wouldn't make any sense. One sound clip depicts two people discussing trying to "get out" and "beat the weather" that will eventually fall on them. The alternative? "Stay and suffer." Certainly this is the dichotomy at the heart of the record.

Years after Bloc Party made singing in British accents scene, many acts like the Knives are dismissed before they start, simply because they don’t screech like Health or No Age. Noise rock is the new chic, and instead of who can write the best foot stomping dance pop rock tune, the challenge has become: who can freak us out more with their eccentricities. Even straight pop seems to be out of its mind lately. MIA made one of the best records of 2007 and retired. Groups like Foals emerge from the ether and become huge overnight, even though they seem to be more like a one-bleep-trick pony than able to write a real pop number. And guess who found the boys from Foals and brought them to the attention of an Oxford label? The Knives did.

I love Iceland. Any country famous for it's daringly unique music has my vote. From singer/professional weirdo Bjork to legendary epic balladeers Sigur Ros, the roster is awe-inspiring. One such juggernaut of musicality, though less known, is a grizzly looking chap named Mugison.Trading laptops and synth pads for more raw ingredients like guitars, horns, and the organ, Icelands very own Jack-of-all-genres returns to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants to. Sometimes he wants to riff a bluesy foot-thumper with a twinge of distortion. Sometimes he wants to scream as loud as he can over confusion and chaos. Sometimes he wants to moan "Jesus." One thing he never wants to do, however is bore us. Welcome to forty minutes of anything but the expected.

Out in stores is the new solo album from Strokes guitarist, and son of the Gibralarian musician of the same name, known as Albert Hammond Jr.. It's called ¿Cómo Te Llama? Yeah, we don't know.

Get ready for Gemany's finest...The darkness of the latest studio offering from The Notwist will be creeping it's way to North America in the fall, with some recently announced mainland US and Canada dates.

Get out your parachute pants, kids. The farther away from the 80's we get, the more frequently we seem to meander back. Buffetlibre, a website dedicated to the promotion of pop and electronic music in legal mp3 formats has started a project called Rewind, a non-commercial collaboration intended "as a unique tribute to one of the golden ages of music history." More like bright gold. Or bright yellow. And purple. Leggings.

Someone Else's Déjà vu (Saddle Creek), the latest release from sort-of-duo Son Ambulance (Joseph Knapp wrote most of the material, but collaborated with Jeffrey Koster), is about as appropriate a title this album could ever have. Take, for example, "A Girl in New York City," the samba-soaked track that recalls another girl from Ipanima, though it is broken up with early Kinks-style guitar riffs. The voice is at times a dead ringer for Art Garfunkel, and yet I also found myself thinking about college girl-favorites, Guster, complete with those soothing vocal harmonies. "Quand Tu Marches Seul" feels like the Spanish ballads from a Tarantino soundtrack, but with a flavor of Leonard Cohen. The Elvis Costello-sounding "Wild Roses," and "Yesterday Morning" continue this theme of songwriting-storytellers.

North Carolina, besides being the stereotypical American south, littered with Waffle Houses and the Confederate flag, has given us some gems. This includes the six piece indie-pop band Annuals. Along the veins of Animal Collective meets Arcade Fire, they channel all the whimsical journeying of experimental pop, with a twinge of the driving force at the heart of bands like Broken Social Scene. Since 2003 they've delivered a breed of layers and tunes that haunt us as much as they deliver a powerful pop aesthetic.

Indie artists are presupposed, even conditioned to despise global juggernauts like Target or Wal-Mart. What could be worse for the mom-and-pop going headphone junkie than a chain of industrial waste machines, carrying every Michael McDonald record with little regard to up and coming underground talent? What if we want that Yeasayer record? Believe it or not, everyone's favorite place to buy a DVD player, Best Buy, really is going to make our summer better. Because the times, they are a changin'. Introducing an incredible distribution deal: the Best Buy initiative.

Overnight blow-up artists Black Kids found crazy buzz, major label attention, and a fast track to the spotlight. Now the new question is, will the love last through their album release? Or will it flicker out and fizzle? Decide for yourself. Even though the album isn't out in the states until later this month, the Florida fivesome have generously posted all of Partie Traumatic on Myspace.

Like a time machine to the past, or a look into the future, New York DJ Andrew Butler has made one of 2008's most talked about records. Why the chatter? It's not the disco, although the album is quite a tribute to dance music of the decade of Tab and Saturday Night Fever. It's not Antony Hegarty, who is the voice of most of the 10 tracks on Hercules. No, it's something else, a combination of forward thinking and nostalgia that bustles along to pulsing octave jumping basslines. It's the genuine surprise as I lay a foot tap to glitzy vocals and horns. It's a sign that maybe the American dance record isn't dead.

After being disapointed with Tha Carter III, we got around to wondering, where is the frontline of progressive hip-hop? Someone who is making sounds and beats that are as ingenious as they are original? We want someone who is "the complete package," or "the future." Luckily, those are the words of Nas we're quoting. And he is talking about Jay Electronica.

The quiet, sensitive singer/songwriter seems all the rage these days (see Bon Iver); everyone is loving that music to sit in a misty rowboat off the moor and mourn something or other. Now the original coastguard of indie blues is back with a new album and a new attitude. We might mention that Ray LaMontagne is less like Iver and more like a more laid back, folksy, likable Nick Drake. We just wanted to make the whole faux-french-name connection. Wait a minute; Ray's name is real. Whatever. The point is, we're pumped. It's called Gossip in The Grain.

Our new favorite California pop act, The Morning Benders just announced a huge new US tour supporting indie rock class clowns We Are Scientists and Ra Ra Riot!. Highlights include Supergrass in L.A., Monolith Festival at the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and the The Treasure Island Festival.

Anyone who is saavy about the music scene in Brooklyn has probably heard about FLYTRAP, an interesting venue and host of an ongoing concert series. The venue (which is really just a house) features "unique vantage points, a capacity for 300 and boasts a beautiful garden setting, in which the bands perform amongst lit up roses, hydrandras, vines, and sunflowers." High brick walls mean good acoustics, and the underground scene has inevitably been attracted to the place. Let's face the facts; it's cool.

Relying mainly on the most traditional form of grass-roots marketing (the word of mouth method), UK garage rock act The Duke Spirit has a sound that channels old favorites like My Bloody Valentine and The Pixies. However they make the sound their own, with a smooth blend of grunge-infused riffs, and the almost classic sounding rock voice of front-lady Liela Moss.