After just releasing their Diversity EP on Tuesday, many of the Memorial Day-celebrating masses missed what should be a must-hear from Family of the Year.

The four-track EP can be bought on iTunes, but whynot stream the harmonizing vocals, uplifting choruses and instrumentally invigorating tracks all the way through before purchasing? “Diversity” plays twice on the EP, with the second version being remixed by the group and really lifting this track to an even more blissful level.

For more on the LA group of Family of the Year, check out their website, Facebook and Twitter pages.

Image from myspace.com/charlenekayemusic

Charlene Kaye will hit Philadelphia’s TLA on June 5th in support of her newly-released sophomore album, Animal Love.  She will share a bill with Team StarKid, and will join them on guitar for their headlining set.  Animal Love clocked in at #15 on the iTunes pop chart, and #65 on the whole.  This unique and versatile musician is a must-see live.

Kaye’s diverse musical influences can be heard through her eclectic ten-song compendium- snippets of psychedelic glam-rock like Queen shine through, especially in the title track, as well as hints of her classical piano education, like in “A Million Years.”  The song’s gentle strings and piano are a nice little acoustic oasis in the collection of fairly synth-infused songs.  Conversely, the very poppy, almost hip-hop-inspired “Woman Up” just bounces along so nicely, right from the get-go with its sprightly guitar riff.  Artists who grew up tinkering out Bach on the piano, but also jammed to Led Zeppelin always create the most interesting and off-the-beaten-path music.

Compared to Kaye’s ‘08 Things I will Need in the Past, her latest effort incorporates many more synthesized sounds, giving it more of a pop feel.  Kaye explains, “With Things, I feel like my classical background compelled me to arrange everything very precisely, right down to the vocal melody… With Animal Love, the process was much more intuitive, and I took risks I normally wouldn’t have in the past.” (From charlenekaye.com)

The TLA is located at 334 South Street in Philadelphia, PA.  Get tickets here.

“Animal Love I”

Part Two of the M83 video movies for 2011′s Hurry Up We’re Dreaming released today.  The track for this episode featured “Reunion”, while the previous video came from “Midnight City.”

The story behind the videos seems to hinge upon kids with super powers who are being analyzed by adults, and they eventually break free.  What this second videos seems to show is that some sort of evil power lies (the red glow), but I guess we’ll all find out in the next video why this evil exists.  The man behind the work, Anthony Gonzalez, used directors Fleur & Manu from Division in Paris.

What really matters is the music, though.  M83 treated album-buyers to a 22-track masterpiece last October with Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming.  The album already boasts remixes from Zola Jesus, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., Christian Strobe and Secret Society, among many others.

For more on M83, check out the website, Facebook and Twitter pages.

Each each we get some out-of-the-blue tracks to share with you and we think most of these are quite good.  This week we think a couple are great and deserve a closer look at their work.  Starting with the greenly new The Thieves from the North to the groove of Avan Lava, lots of these artists are also giving away their entire albums for free for a limited time.

The Weekly Download features completely free and legal MP3s sent to us by the artists themselves for download once a week, albeit more all at once! We hope you enjoy our weekly submissions.

We chose these songs for you to discover, download and explore more about the artists behind them. Please support the artists by visiting their artist links next to each of the MP3s.

The XX – Shelter (Bombjack’s Mirrors Cover) [The XX] [Bombjack]
Avan Lava – Feels Good [Artist]
Husky – History’s Door [Artist]
Jamie McLean Band – Natalie [Artist]
Colour Coding – Perfect [Artist]
One Era – You Know Why [Artist]
Mirror City – Someone To Count On [Artist]
Zulu Winter – Silver Tongue (The Darcys Remix) [Zulu Winter] [The Darcys]
Revolution, I Love You – Cotton Shirts [Artist]
The Thieves from the North – LK [Artist]
Laid Back – Cocaine Cool Extended [Artist]
Blind Benny – No Honor [Artist]
Skatan – Nothing [Artist]

Gee, I wonder what’s good this week?  Perhaps a little something called The Walkmen.  You guessed it, for those of you who don’t map out an album release calendar for themselves like I do, you probably had no idea until today that their 7th album titled Heaven is out today.  These guys have been at it since 2002.  If there’s anything you listen to this week, it’s Heaven.  Listen to their title-track “Heaven” here.

They’ve crept into your ears without you even knowing it – Lemonade‘s “Softkiss” has risen in the ranks on hypem.com and for good reason.  Their new album titled Diver has that warbling bass and a modern 80′s sound that will have you tapping your feet.

There’s so much more to get to on here, particularly Angus’ counterpart – Julia Stone who’s album By The Horns is out today.  Sigur Ros‘ ever evolving self-created language is also out today in their melodic album titled Vltari, and Regina Spektor releases What We Saw From the Cheap Seats.  Listen to the tracks below for more of this week’s picks on our New Releases.

2:54 – 2:54 [Artist]
Burial – Street Halo/Kindred EP [Artist]
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros – Here [Artist]
Julia Stone – By the Horns [Artist]
King Tuff – King Tuff [Artist]
Lemonade – Diver [Artist]
Millencolin – Melancholy Connection [Artist]
Marissa Nadler – Sister [Artist]
Melody Gardot – Absence [Artist]
Preteen Zenith – Rubble Guts & BB Eye [Artist]
Public Image LTD – This is PIL [Artist]
Scissor Sisters – Magic Hour [Artist]
Sigur Ros – Valtari [Artist]
Simian Mobile Disco – Unpatterns [Artist]
Rebecca Ferguson – Heaven [Artist]
Regina Spektor – What We Saw From the Cheap Seats [Artist]
Sun Kil Moon – Among the Leaves [Artist]
The Dig – Midnight Flowers [Artist]
The Walkmen – Heaven [Artist]

Julia Stone

Camp America’s Intuition & Dreams released a month ago without our noticing.  For shame.  What’s alluring could be tracks like “Any Kind of Pulse”, which strings the electronic prowess of Camp America’s sole proprietor Steven Cowley with the smooth vocals of Athlete’s Joel Potts

The project of Cowley really deserves more attention since he’s not just a bedroom pop artist as he’s also collaborated with artists such as Bloc Party’s guitarist Russell Lissack and Paper Route’s JT Daly.   This is all just the tip of the iceberg for Camp America though.  The Rustington, UK artist released his Camp America EP back in 2008 with the help of Joel Pott and has been mastering tracks on his laptop and adding his own instrumentals along the way ever since.

While Intuition & Dreams released at the end of April, fans can stream and purchase the album from Camp America’s Bandcamp page.  For more on Camp America, also check out the website and Facebook pages.

For those of you who don’t watch Game of Thrones, The National’s new track should give you a good idea of what the show is all about.  “The Rains of Castamere” is an orchestral slow-burn.  A foreboding figure for string quartet anchors Matt Berninger’s subdued baritone as he leads us through a cryptic, almost spoken narrative.  Following the band’s contribution to the Portal 2 soundtrack, it shouldn’t surprise listeners to see them dig deeper into the fantasy world.  The complete soundtrack is expected for release on June 19.

Listen to the track on youtube:

As a child brought up in the Nintendo era, finding the third whistle in Mario 3 was a major topic of conversation at the lunch table in grade school.  I could be dating myself, but I believe the background of falling in love with all of the visuals and 8-bit sounds of the fantastic Nintendo games in the 80s and early 90s sets the tone for why this 8-bit album marks such an big musical milestone for me personally but more so for its creator, Quinton Sung.  Yet not just any album, Radiohead’s OK Computer, perhaps one of the most widely agreed upon greatest albums of our time.

What is chiptune?

Chiptune for those unaware are songs made in Muzak format, only to the 8-bit sounds imput as the sountrack for 80s/90s video games.  At first, I could only think of all of the other 8-bit songs that have been created under a genre known as ‘chiptune’.  Examples of this are Death Cab For Cutie’s “I Will Follow You Into The Dark” or Metric’s “Gimme Sympathy”.  There are plenty of others though.  Just do a Google search with the artist and ’8 bit’ after it.  8-bit reworks have been a geeky thing of our present times and closely embraced by those who have either grown up in the era I did or ventured back into the art form that provided the groundwork for video games today.

On first listen, I couldn’t help hearing the amount of 8-bit Nintendo clips included in this album.  I’m practically sure the snare on “Airbag” was something I recall from Contra.  “Let Down”‘s rhythm is made up of that noise from Metroid.  “Karma Police” has that synth from Kid Icarus (and many others, I’m sure).  I heard the stabbing of the sword from Zelda – you know, the one that sends a flying sword when your life is full.  I could hear the beat in “Electioneering” made up of the punching noises from Punchout!  You know, those punches that you have to throw at Don Flamingo to get him too go after you…. Couple that with the Spy Hunter synth and we’ve got a winner.  And then there are less notables games represented in the segway track, “Fitter Happier” from one of my favorite games – Robowarrior.

I won’t give them all away since half the fun is figuring out where they came from and what games they’ve been used in.  Any Nintendo fan would agree, this 8-bit album of Radiohead’s OK Computer is a two-fold masterpiece.  In one hand, I’m helplessly mumbling words to songs I’ve replayed hundreds of times, and in the other, I’m deciphering the bleeps and blips that brought me right back to the games I spent drooling over in Nintendo Power.

Perhaps I’m in a strange class by myself, but the amount of work and creativity that went into structuring this album not only closely resembles OK Computer, but trickles all the way down to “Fitter, Happier” (which Sung claims was a joke to begin with).  Surely Sung has outdone himself here.  This album is not only a tribute to Nintendo and the many 8-bit sounds that made the visuals come to life, but this effort married an album to that art form in such a way that he paid tribute to both sides of the coin.

Sung was kind enough to offer this album as a free download via YouTube and even add in a track I’m not familiar with titled “Lift”, which I believe to be one of his own creations.  You can stream and download the entire 8-bit Radiohead OK Computer album below.  Believe it or not, Kid A was also done by Sung in 8-bit.  That will be for another day though.

What games can you hear?  Which track is your favorite?

MP3: Radiohead – Airbag (Quinton Sung 8-Bit Rework)
MP3: Radiohead – Paranoid Android (Quinton Sung 8-Bit Rework)
MP3: Radiohead – Subterranean Homesick Alien (Quinton Sung 8-Bit Rework)
MP3: Radiohead – Exit Music (for a Film) (Quinton Sung 8-Bit Rework)
MP3: Radiohead – Let Down (Quinton Sung 8-Bit Rework)
MP3: Radiohead – Karma Police (Quinton Sung 8-Bit Rework)
MP3: Radiohead – Fitter Happier (Quinton Sung 8-Bit Rework)
MP3: Radiohead – Electioneering (Quinton Sung 8-Bit Rework)
MP3: Radiohead – Climbing up the Walls (Quinton Sung 8-Bit Rework)
MP3: Radiohead – No Surprises (Quinton Sung 8-Bit Rework)
MP3: Radiohead – Lucky (Quinton Sung 8-Bit Rework)
MP3: Radiohead – The Tourist (Quinton Sung 8-Bit Rework)
MP3: Quinton Sung – Lift

If you had never heard Damien Jurado’s previous albums before going to his show at Johnny Brenda’s Sunday night, you would not have known that his performance did not reflect his typical style.  In listening to Caught in the Trees, his latest record Maraqopa, and a few songs from his earlier repertoire, I did not expect to hear such raucous, psychedelic jam sessions on the stage that night.  I was pleasantly surprised.

For the bulk of the set, Jurado played with a four-piece band, including a drummer, bassist, guitarist and keyboard player.  They started off with “Nothing is the News” from Jurado’s latest release, which was aggressively rocky and Zeppelin-esque, very jammy.  The tune that followed it, the album’s title track, sported high-pitched, ethereal synthesizer work, the keys dancing out a little melody like a butterfly flying against rhythmic guitar riffs.

Jurado’s voice was coming through clear, powerful and reverby.  His was one of the most passionate vocal performances I’ve seen from an artist in a while.  The high-end arpeggio-like lines in the synth keys made “Reel to Reel” sound celestial, almost out of place for a band that played such jam-based rock a mere twenty minutes ago.  But Jurado is a versatile artist, and that is warmly welcome in the world of indie/folk rock.  His echo-y voice was very cool contrast against the song’s percussive nature.  I felt vibrations from the drums in my knees.

“Everyone a Star” also proved noteworthy, and included a guitar solo that was not too intense but still loud and rambunctious.  The initially mellow song ramped up to a fairly high-energy brawl, in which Jurado turned his back to the audience and rocked, moving his guitar up like Steve Howe or Robert Fripp may have done during a performance.  The breakdown reconvened back to the main riff for just a second before ending.

“Museum of Flight” was a much-awaited performance, at least for me anyway.  It was delivered very passionately and was a particular point of intensity in the line-up.  However, the keyboard interlude composed of a nearly exact replication of the verse melody did not come through loud enough.  Other than that, the song was great.  “Horizons”, to follow that, was loud and jam-heavy, with interesting riffs, textures and colors, and otherworldly keyboard work.  It was like a jam session from the ’60s, and all that was missing were psychedelic drugs.

Just before Jurado played “Let Us All In” with the band, he said “This is a fun song before we go to the most depressing shit you’ve ever heard.”  He took the stage solo with low lighting, and appropriately started his mini acoustic set with “Sheets” from Caught in the Trees.  It was much more fluid solo than with the band.  He followed that with “Rachel and Cali”, then “Oh Nevada”.  The fourth and last acoustic song was monumental and almost eerie.  Its massive guitar hits interspersed with tonally ambiguous strumming startled, chilled and haunted.  Apart from the very intimate lyrics, Jurado sang “oohs” that sounded almost like a flute, like they were coming from somewhere else.

“Everyone a Star”

damienjurado.com