North Carolina's Bowerbirds got affectingly environmental for '08s "In Our Talons" before performing three songs in an Austrian park without burning anything down. They return to the woods in the video for Upper Air's "Northern Lights." Much of the imagery looks like it'd do well on a Mt Eerie/Microphones album cover: rural waters, bark, moss, sunsets, waterfowl, etc ... the sentiments behind It Was Hot, We Stayed in the Water set to moving images. Fittingly then, this time nothing burns except the love set to lines like "all I want is your eyes in the morning as we wake for a short while," the chemistry of the indoor performance/nature walk: Sometimes it's good to stop hugging trees and to turn to the person next to you.

About this time last year, Islands' Nick Thorburn promised via a Progress Report to do a free solo album called I Am An Attic as a gift for fans. It was supposed to be part of a New Year's Resolution, and, well, you know how those go. A year later, Thorburn seems to have some doubts, wondering over Twitter if his album is "total trash or worth releasing." This little taste from the possibly-maybe new album points to the latter. The languorous transition from verse to chorus is especially sweet and summery.

Los Angeles True Panther associate and Tanlines collaborator Cameron Mesirow, aka Glasser, has a new 12" out in March. The title track -- a standout that's been floating around for a bit, but finally finds a proper release -- builds its dreamy momentum via overlapping percussion, vocals, synthesizers/electronics, and a feel that's both tropical and frozen. The lyrics deal with water, tides, drowning. Take a dip.

With Teen Dream Beach House have vaulted themselves onto the upper rung of 2010 LP chatter, so it's rather fitting to see them throw some fresh wares into the mix of Record Store Day's annual indie-store-exclusives. Their four-track Zebra EP promises alternate versions of two Dreams (both "Zebra" and the Cough Syrup Remix of "10 Mile Stereo") and two unreleased tracks. Front and center is "The Arrangement," which Beach House performed for an upcoming Sirius Radio session, part of the pair's Sirius XMU takeover next week. Hear the live take here:

Danger Mouse and James Mercer hit-up The Road for "The High Road" video. Now they've actually taken Broken Bells to the streets: The guys performed their debut show Friday 2/19 at the Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles. Speaking of bootlegs, someone videotaped the entire thing, including a cover of "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea," the first of a two-song encore. The motivation? Note Mercer's post-song quip. That, and it's a great song still worth getting emo about.

We're already seen one video for "Nothing Like You," but Frightened Rabbit decided the song was great enough for two videos (we agree). The guys went charmingly homemade/low-budget for this alternate video. The band start off in boxers and wifebeaters, as if they filmed this over a band sleepover party. At the end of it, everyone wears a t-shirt with the words "tumor" across the chest, which makes the song best lyric -- "she was not the cure for cancer" -- even better. Cancer is other people, guys (Sartre).

A big week for Broken Social Scene fans: First you found medicine in "World Sick" and now, as we once mentioned in a footnote to an editorial, Feist performed a one-off at the Orpheum in Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The set included a new one, "He Was Free." As a pre-teen she performed as a dancer in the opening ceremonies for the '88 Calgary Winter Games. This is a more stripped-down showing because it's not 1988. The camera operator has a few tilt issues, but the Uta Barth framing doesn't mess with the sound.

Our first couple days in Oslo were all about wandering and seeing as much as possible, but Friday involved staying put in a single venue for most of the night. The festival organizers asked us to curate a showcase of Nordic bands: We made a general wish list and it was narrowed down a couple of times, etc. The end results were hosted at Stratos, a club on the top floor of a tall building/mall, Youngstorget. The space included an outdoor balcony with an excellent view of the city: It was cold, but the view was good enough that even non-smokers made their way onto it throughout the night. Outside of curating, they'd also asked us to DJ. I threw together a set that moved between extreme metal and pop. An example: Cobalt to Dum Dum Girls to Burzum to Velocity Girl to Beherit to jj to Alcest to Fuck Buttons to Hooded Menace. Then there were the actual bands.

This Sara-penned track from Sainthood is a sparser affair than previously video'd song "Hell." So "Alligator" gets a fittingly minimalist treatment here. The Quin sisters plus three others do a synchronized dance with some serious "Cross Bones Style" to it, though Tegan & Sara pick much better costumes for "Alligator," with some winter crochet wraps that exist somewhere between Oak and Etsy.

Pair this off with Friday's taste from post-millennial indie rock's other most visible Canadian collective. The New Pornographers' anticipated forthcoming fifth-length Together is due in May, with its core crew (A.C. Newman, Dan Bejar, Kathryn Calder, Neko Case, John Collins, Kurt Dahle, Todd Fancey, and Blaine Thurier) bolstered by the came talents of Annie Clark, Zach Condon, Will Sheff, the Dap-Kings horns, and cetera. Matador's let loose its first sample with the blustery, Carl-and-Neko power-popper "Your Hands (Together)," which is up for grabs here:

Marnie Stern's knitting is an important part of the progress report, because right now she really can't think of much else to do. The followup to the excellent This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That was completed in December and is ready for mixing. And it feels too soon to start a new record, yet her next one still has a few months (August or September, she thinks) before it'll be released. Stern says she doesn't like to go for walks in the city. She hates the cold, and only goes out about once a month "for like five drinks then I pass out in a cab." Her boyfriend lives in Calgary. She's not very internet savvy. So for now she stays inside, knits, plays guitar, and hangs out with her dog. "My mom calls us Grey Gardens! We're just in the bed all day long," she says.

With this cover of "The End Of The World," Bay Area janglers Girls nearly make beloved country-pop songstress Skeeter Davis a trending topic. Their Skeeter spin is the second of its kind from a high profile act of late, the other logged in the tracklist of She & Him's forthcoming Vol. 2 (that'd be "Gonna Get Along Without You'"). Girls chose the very best (or at least, the most notable) Skeeter song for their purposes, here, and there's no surprise that takiing on Skeeter's vulnerable, world-weary vocal suits Chris just fine.

If you weren't at last night's Cold Cave set in Los Angeles, you might have to wait awhile. The darkwave synthpop project and BTW centering around Wes Eisold canceled the remainder of their US dates, resuming their tour in the UK in March. Apparently it's a lineup shakeup that's at fault: While this photo set shows that ex-Xiu Xiu lovely Caralee McElroy is M.I.A., Cold Cave was still an all-star assemblage of sorts, playing last night with the addition of ex-Mika Miko telephone operator/actress Jennifer Clavin and ex-Hercules & Love Affair guy Guy Licata, alongside reliable accomplice, noise aesthete Dominick Fernow (Prurient). No word on what version of Cold Cave will make the trip to Europe, but by this gallery I'd say Guy and Jennifer look good as vampires. Andrew Youssef delivers these shots, along with those of the openers on a stacked bill that included much loved Bethany Cosentino aka Best Coast and scraggly, glam-struck Chicago garage-pop crew Smith Westerns. Dope bill, you should be on all these bands.

Charlie Looker busily collaborates to myriad projects that flirt with abrasive, experimental, and/or extreme sounds around the city, but it's BTW Extra Life that allows him space to fully express his singular blend of dexterous, classically inclined modal melodies, dense and winding composition, and a dark hued, metallic heaviness that hammers hard despite the band's tendency to steer clear of guitar distortion. And the shit jams live, where Charlie coaxes a sort of controlled violence from his precise guitar playing and adenoidal vocals. In the waaaaay creepy Peaking Team-directed video for "Head Shrinker" he plays the title role, but instead of controlled violence from a guitar he's coaxing from his psychotherapy patient discharge that's both emotional and surreal. (Surreal = pulling gold coins from a gash in his belly.) I guess the video's shifting between stark black & white and a fantasy masked sax player, or depiction of Charlie as a fastidious doctor with a quiet menace, sort of touches on that control/violence dichotomy in Extra Life's music. But mostly it's just super unsettling and probably the perfect look for Extra Life. Watch it:

Headline says it. Yesterday you saw photo and blurb that introduced this far-flung pop cultural consortium, today it materializes. What does it say about this band that somehow this lineup of Friends Of Vampire Weekend not only doesn't surprise but seems entirely logical to me? Like of course RZA, a JoBro, Lil Jon, and Donnie Darko are gonna get down with Contra. Because at this point who isn't? Can't stay mad at an album that drops and repeats so effortlessly, save those critics with overly prickly sensitivities for the embedded semiotics of race and class issues in pop music. Anyway this video is super fun: You may recognize the main lady here from the "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" video (her name IRL is Jenny, because of course her name in IRL is Jenny), you'll definitely recognize most of the rest of the faces from their being famous. Tennis is the game, RZA's the line judge, Gyllenhaal is funny, this is all sort of great. Here's what Ezra had to say about pulling it together.

The liquid, pliant lead single from Caribou's upcoming album Swim now has a video that's equally soft-edged. No concrete storyline here -- just lots of wintry nature shots blending into one another, and a woman driving, then walking through the snow, with a sort of Into The Wild vibe to the beginning/ending. Like the song's protagonist, the video's main character is also in the process of escaping from someone, with just as little success.

The new Broken Social Scene album is imminent. This much you know, along with knowing that the collective's pared down to a relatively lean six-member core for its sessions, and that "the new record is, like all Broken Social Scene albums, a record driven by love." Aww! Kevin Drew, Brendan Canning, Justin Peroff, Charles Spearin, Andrew Whiteman, Sam Goldberg, and Lisa Lobsinger are its principal love apostles, it was recorded in Toronto and produced by the band and John McEntire in Chicago, and the list of "guests" comprises half of Toronto. Now we're another phase deeper into its guaranteed invasion of Blogger Mindspace V.2010 with what it looks like (that's the art), what it's called (Forgiveness Rock Record, jam), and what it partially sounds like via "World Sick" (expansive, uplifting, dramatic, melodic, in other words a BSS song, and a good one at that). Headphones up, put on repeat, then do whatever you do when listening to heart-swelling bliss jams:

Scott and I arrived in Oslo early Wednesday morning, which gave us plenty of time to stave-off jet lag, get our bearings, and check email before venturing full-on into by:Larm 2010. If you're unfamiliar with the festival, it's an annual event that brings together new, familiar, etc., Nordic bands for three days/nights of shows, panels, and the like. (I attended the one in the more northerly and icy city of Trondheim, Norway a couple years ago.) As I told someone yesterday who asked for my two cents: by:Larm's exciting because it involves some actual discovery. It's not often you can go to a festival these days without already knowing the story and music behind every name in the lineup. So here's to ignoring Google for a few days...

Burt Bacharach is both one of the most accomplished and beloved songwriters in pop music and this guy. This April, O'Rourke will release a far more dignified tribute to Bacharach titled All Kinds of People (via 24Bit). O'Rourke played many instruments (guitar, keyboards bass) on and produced the covers album, while Wilco's Glenn Kotche handled drums. Thurston Moore and Boredom's Yoshimi are among the artists who contributed. The covers span Bacharach's long career, with songs that were originally recorded by the Carpenters, Dionne Warwick, and Burt himself. O'Rourke will perform selections from the album alongside some of its other artists a week before release. Both of those shows will take place in Japan, where O'Rourke's been living, working, and recording Joanna Newsom records. The full tracklist and guestlist:

Brooklyn's the Hundred In The Hands have been around for a minute -- guitarist Jason Friedman was in the the Boggs, singer Eleanore Everdell did guest vocals for "Lover's Day" from TV On The Radio's Dear Science. Together the duo make tight, danceable post-punk, as on "Dressed In Dresden." The "Dresden" single was originally out in 2009, but Warp just signed the Hundred In The Hands and commissioned a series of remixes for the official release. This one, from Maxime, uncoils the song a little, softens up the drums, and matches some bubbly synth to Everdell's airy vocals. It's not as pounding as the original -- maybe Maxime sensed that there was more room to play around with the song if there was a bit more space to breathe.

Think Ghostface turned RZA on to Vampire Weekend? Probably. According to Anthem Magazine (via P4K), who talked to co-director Emmett Malloy (younger brother Brendan also directs), Ezra Koening came up with the "Giving Up The Gun" video's tennis match concept on his own. RZA plays ref, Lil Jon is a tennis coach, and Gyllenhaal and Jonas are competitors. Malloy mentioned that band friend "Jenny," who looks like the same Jenny from their "Oxford Comma" video, stars. The Malloys also have White Stripes and Oasis documentaries under their belts, as well as videos for the Jonas Brothers and Cold War Kids. Keep eyes peeled for this one tomorrow. Nice photo, dudes.

So you've heard "Little Secrets" quite a bit, probably. Passion Pit released a video for the single late last year, but debuted a joyous, higher quality one for the song today. The clip was directed by hotshot Partizan director Tim Saccenti, who's previously directed videos for Animal Collective, Chairlift, and Jamie Lidell. He's also responsible for Battles' "Atlas" video. Saccenti is also a fine art photographer, and you can see his amazing eye for color on "Little Secrets" -- every slow-motion confetti burst feels like a mini-epic.

Jannis Noy Makrigiannis's Choir Of Young Believers landed here last summer with the billowing, widescreen orchestral pomp of Next Summer," and extend the lifecycle of their This Is For The White In Your Eyes LP with a three-track release of "Claustrophobia." It comes packing the album track alongside its remix by the Antlers' Peter Silberman, and Sian Alice Group's take on another album track, "Wintertime Love." For COYB, Jannis's tenor is a selling point as much as it is a point of reference (see: Robin Pecknold), and the Antlers' redo of "Claustrophobia" preserves it wholesale save some minor outro manipulations, modifying the spacious original only to reflect its titular intent, clouding the air with warping synths and glitched beats. Makes sense.

The Golden Archipelago, which has already birthed two downloadable previews in the soaring "Castaways" and its wind-blown counterpart "Black Eyes," sees its first official video treatment today at the hands of director Alma Har'el. Jonathan Meiburg is in full costumer for "Hidden Lakes"' 3/4 piano reverie by way of Talk Talk, dirty and destitute, crawling across a barren land before running into an evil looking Thor Harris (guessing it's Thor by that earring, tough to say for sure without seeing his bare chest and hammer dulcimer). At which point they make a meaningful exchange of soulful looking puppies. Totally normal.

The Colossus seems like RJD2 putting his sample-based work alongside his more recent singer-songwriter-y tendencies. The two Colossus flavors so far demonstrate this: "Let There Be Horns" connected back to Deadringer, "Games You Can't Win" worked the middle ground, but "The Glow" shows where his interests have been lately. RJD2 sings and plays drums over this quietly sarcastic track about the "glow" of money, fake tans, and weekends spend in The Poconos. (Do rich people go to The Poconos?). The doll-filled video stars a Ken Doll yuppie who drives around in a convertible and steals food. Like a yuppie Yogi Bear.

In its second year, Knoxville's Big Ears Festival has stepped up and spread out with a considerably dope lineup of events and installations worth your consideration. Worth your attendance, even, although its proximity in time (but not space) to SXSW is a minor hangup. (The festival runs from March 26th to March 28th.) But this is a congregation for a different sort of music fan: Rather than focus on Clear Channel caliber headliners or obscure up-and-comers, Big Ears has created a slate of some of your favorites, engaging in unique performances and intriguing collaborative projects. Yes there are big (in our world) names: Sufjan Stevens, Joanna Newsom, the National, Vampire Weekend, St. Vincent. And yes the hype cycle gets a spin: jj, Liturgy, and the xx get play. But it's the aforementioned mindmelds that stand out. To wit: Sufjan, Matt Berninger, and Shara Worden join Clogs (like they do) to recreate their The Creatures IN The Garden Of Lady Walton songcycle. The Bang On A Can all-stars will perform pieces composed by Dave Longstreth and Thurston Moore, as well as an interpretation of Eno's iconic Music For Airports with the Books and Tim Hecker. And so on. It's spread out over four venues -- the Tennessee Theatre, the Bijou Theatre, the Knoxfvlle Museum Of Art, and the Pilot Light -- and promises "surprise collaborations, art installations, a film program, workshops, lectures, interactive experiences, and more." Tickets go onsale tomorrow right here. The full lineup:

There's a certain paranoia lurking beneath the laconic vocalisms Angus layers at the outset of "Scissor," the opening track to Liars typically excellent new LP Sisterworld. Andrew uses that storyteller's pace and injection of unease to foreshadow then launch into a claustrophobic freakout. Reset. And repeat. It's a push-pull of dramatic tension befitting this short filmic/poetically bizarre video which finds AA stranded at sea and finding his life vessel has the slight problem of filling up with rocks? He's gonna need a bigger boat. Which he finds. Then things get utterly weird. Watch this:

London hosted the BRIT Awards last night, which offered some nice firsts: Lily Allen won her first award as Best British Female Solo Act and her first as a Snooki lookalike (fire the stylist), and Lady Gaga swept three international awards. International Male of the year? Jay-Z. A performance highlight came via two of the night's winners, Dizzee Rascal and Florence & the Machine, performing a live mashup titled "You've Got The Dirtee Love," because Flo's "You've Got The Love" is built for this shit. Liam Gallagher also accepted an award for What's The Story (Morning Glory)? for best BRIT album of the last 30 years. It was up against albums from the Verve, Coldplay, Travis, and Keane. And Phil Collins' No Jacket Required. Robbed.

Flo + Dizzee, a bunch of photos, and a full list of winners await: