The Walkmen released a non-album track as the b-side to first single “Heaven” this week, and it’s gorgeous. Leithauser’s vocals move at a leisurely pace through inherited memories towards that damn build in the final minute that renders the last arc of the song completely afloat. The album is out May 29 on Fat Possum.

There is something about a Tallest Man On Earth morning. His first release from his upcoming There’s No Leaving Now is a welcome return, like seeing an old friend after a particularly neglectful time to ground you back in place.

Kristian Matsson captures the idea of constant movement like a sprawling green field that’s growing and blowing, that no matter how indulgent you’re feeling with how singular your life is, you have to always remember that everything around you is still moving just the same. It’s this sort of big-picture wisdom that grounds much of his wandering songwriting (“When the leaving is hard but you go now/ And you feel what you drag across the floor“) that knows the bittersweet feeling of moving on when it’s time to go, especially when there are still some reasons to stay.

I have trouble always staying on the lyrics, which are suggestive and intimate, without getting lost in the melody’s pockets that reflect and bounce. But his songs are not so much about hanging onto every word as just paying attention to mood before lines like “sometimes noise in just your mind” dart through. There’s a palpable sense of feeling to his songs, of smell and touch, and it’s the way they just sit there with you as long as you want that becomes a real comfort. His vocal wail with a bit of old-fashioned innocence and a whine that’s become distinct from his oft-compared Dylan influence contrasts in stride with his bright, flowing melodies that go on forever in either direction.

If you’re sensitive to weather, be careful with this one – it might give you spring fever. There’s No Leaving Now is out June 12, which is subjectively shaping up to be The Best Month Ever.

For most females (and some males) of a certain age, the Disney Princess represents a deeply ingrained notion of ideal femininity. As little girls, we spent countless hours recreating her scenarios in our imaginations: swimming in sexy little shell bras and mutely wooing a foxy prince, escaping the confines of our enormous Arabian palace to mingle amongst violent hand-chopping common folk — only to be saved by a charming, fez-sporting street rat; taming ferocious and hairy (but ultimately gentle) man-beasts…the Everywoman list goes on. Like it or not, we internalized these stories as scripts for our own lives, and at least partially constructed our ideas of future relationships based on Disney’s fantastical depictions of love.

So what’s a girl to do when the reality of romance falls short of the sparkling, magical affairs she was primed to expect? Set that disillusionment to some scuzzy synth beats, obviously. British duo Bluebell does just that in “Cinderella,” a bright, catchy single whose lyrics simultaneously mock and mourn the loss of the fairytale ideal all over a sweeping, highly-danceable pop arrangement.

The song opens with vocalist Annabel Jones questioning the discrepancies between high expectations and the truth of her situation: “Is this love what I understand it to be,” Jones croons meekly over producer Charlie Westropp’s repetitive, jarring piano chords. The beat drops soon after and escalates with ominous electronic timbres into the admission that “this is no Walt Disney/ I’m no Cinderella, I’m just a girl.” The song features a perfect blend of pretty and ugly, soft and hard—marrying the delusional sweetness of fantasy with a grittier reality, but not so gritty that you can’t get down to it.

Though Jones insists she’s “just a girl,” if the rest of Bluebell’s tracks are as fun as this one, she just might be in
the running for a happily ever after. Look for the release June 11 alongside “Normal Heights” on Killing Moon.

New Four Tet tends to come along when I really need it.  When it’s a week where I need to lock into a groove, zone out from distractions, and enter into a state of pure focus.  Hebden’s newest release (off his Text Records) allows me to do just that.

The A-Side, “Jupiters” begins with starry synth reflections before hitting home with the groove.  There’s a quiet after the electronic meandering, before the track finds it’s path, allowing one a last chance to cut ties with the outside world.  The track peaks as the beat, vocals, and synth lines come together jetting to a world only Four Tet is capable of finding.

The B-Side “Ocoras” is a gray motion blur of percussion dabbled with hints of metallic synth and industrial detail.  If there was ever a track that allowed for full concentration…this is it.

Check out both below:

Ever find yourself working late in a pizza parlor and have the strange urge to sever your finger on a pie sliced like a pentagram? While not a common urge, few of the deviant concepts in Father John Misty’s video peripherary are. Grant James’ dismal noir take at shotgun violence and brutal sacrifice finds former Fleet Foxes drummer Josh Tillman at the top of his strange game.

Thanks Sub Pop. Keep the gems coming.

There comes a point in May (and I think it’s Cinco de Mayo) when we begin to hear summer’s call, the time of year most closely associated with youthful indiscretion. It’s strangely nostalgic and you have to just let it wash over you like a seasonal stage change. Maybe it’s California, but our best memories, it seems, are always floating around bathed in a kind of airy summer light.

Josh Legg of NightWaves is based in Los Angeles so I can only assume he’s named after “the best bar ever” and all-around great place to start off said misbehavior. Check out the open field track “Fifteen” featuring Australian vocalist Chela that lets you wander a bit in the past just as it feels like you’re in the middle of taking some big steps forward.

The Walkmen released another song off their upcoming Heaven today. Off the heels of their title track, “We Can’t Be Beat” is all about the necessity of the other side of perfection, and danger in not planning for and accommodating failure along the way (“Golden dreams all lose their glow”). It starts off like a lullaby, with Hamilton Leithause’s recognizable warble over leisurely-picked strings before reaching a Western dirt-kicked gallop into the sunset, like a man who’s lived through his convictions. Their follow-up to Lisbon is out May 29.

There’s a captivating hypocrisy to the culture of youth that we can’t escape from, and often indulge in. We speak in extremes, of the best nights and the worst days; of great hopes and of bad dreams. We drink in excess, and love in fragments. We denounce ignorance, and devour kindness, like a sickness, like a plague. We stargaze and we legitimize, we get stuck and we leave behind. We encounter new faces but fall into old habits. We’re exhausted by possibility, and get restless in the hustle. We fuck it all up, and then make our peace. We grow, and we slide. But we feel and we feel and oh, do we feel. Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?

The Echo Friendly are Shannon Esper and Jake Rabinach, whose “Same Mistakes” (the one you heard at the end of last night’s episode of Girls) is an audio impression of the kind of moods we fluctuate between, the place between action and reflection on the sources of real anguish. The joint vocalists trade indiscretions that are both self-pitying (“I never did grow up/ Feels like I never will“) and confessional (“My friends are such a drag/ They think I’m such a flake“) that all round about “I haven’t changed a bit/ I make the same mistakes” in an honest moment of self-critical insight that’s necessary for any eventual forward momentum. The melody drifts from its dwelling clarity, temporarily giving way to the mayhem of the clouded moment before coming to an interrupted end, like an unfinished story of a work in progress – hinting at our role in the process of it all.

The point in young adulthood, it seems, is to embrace the meaningless chores with the confounding beauty, take the good with the bad, and know that it all has its place in time. To soak it all up into the pores of your skin to build at something full of its ebbs and its flows, to direct movement and foster balance. It is one of the harder lessons to accept, the trust it takes to hold your greatest imperfections by the hand to move ahead so that you may one day look back, without a sigh, at time well-spent.

The Echo Friendly’s LP Love Panic will be out this summer.

If you don’t connect with the Beastie Boy’s albums, you fall under one of two categories: 1. You are one of those people who proclaims loudly that you are in search of “high art,” while secretly you crank the volume when “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” comes on the radio. 2. You have no sense of rhythm whatsoever and words such as “inappropriate” escape your mouth on a regular basis.

The Beastie’s music doesn’t need to sacrifice fun to make art and doesn’t need to sacrifice art to make fun. Now that this seemingly lighthearted, simple notion comes from a band that has lost one of its members to cancer, maybe a plea to just enjoy things seems a bit more artistically viable to doubters. The greatest testament to this was the determination of MCA to record 16 consummate party tracks with the Beasties for Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, while undergoing treatment for cancer in one of his salivary glands.

Put simply, MCA was a hell of a bassist, lyricist, performer, and all around awesome dude. His expert rhymes put to the sickest beats ever were undeniably accessible and illustrated a man at the top of his artistic game. Funny enough, his ultimate statement seemed to show an indifference to these sorts of declarations: the recognition of something as art is merely an afterthought to its enjoyment.