video: Narrow Sparrow - "Joe Meek's Dream"

Narrow Sparrow - Joe Meek's Dream (Music Video) from Richard Portillo on Vimeo.

Unrestrained "bizarro pop" from Chicago's Narrow Sparrow.  Fuzzy as a wool sweater and as angst-filled as anything on In The Aeroplane Over The Sea.  Expect this on 7" soon. 

Full disclosure: band member Ricky Portillo and this writer are good friends. Song rules either way.

new Patrick Kelleher & His Cold Dead Hands - "Miracle Candle"

New "ghost disco" track from Patrick Kelleher & His Cold Dead Hands, featuring spastic synths, muffled vocals and jangly guitars. 

Patrick Kelleher and his Cold Dead Hands - Miracle Candle by Patrick Kelleher

Follow Patrick Kelleher on MySpace and SoundCloud.

Youth Lagoon - "Cannons"

Boise's Trevor Powers makes blissfully beautiful lo-fi pop as Youth Lagoon.  "Cannons" is only the second song we've heard from that project, and already, we know we can expect great things from it.  The song's melodic tones and jangly guitar arpeggios recall Beach House, while Powers' nasally, unrestrained vocals reminded me of Page France.  Youth Lagoon's debut full-length The Year of Hibernation is due this summer on new label Juno Beach Records. 

Youth Lagoon - Cannons

Follow Youth Lagoon on bandcamp / Facebook / SoundCloud / Twitter

(via No Modest Bear)

How To Dress Well - "Waking Up To Life Sometimes Seems Worse"

Chicago's own lo-fi R&B crooner How To Dress Well just covered R. Kelly.  It sounds...well...pretty much like How To Dress Well covering R. Kelly.  Which is to say heartrendingly gorgeous.  If there's sensuality here, as R&B almost requires, it's the intimacy with which artist Tom Krell quivers over each note and the cadence in which he sings.  Frail and fractured to a frighteningly beautiful degree. 

How To Dress Well - Waking Up To Life Sometimes Seems Worse (R. Kelly Cover)

(via Tri-Angle Records on SoundCloud)

Hips Like Cinderella - all the girls i know all of them EP

Jheri Evans of Get Off The Coast recently posted "it's what ev" from Hips Like Cinderella and it pretty much swept me off my feet like a knight in shining armor might do to a Disney princess.  The song is basically the ghost of John Lennon issuing imperceptible echoes as lyrics over some seriously bent-to-shit, buzz-saw guitar riffs.  I immediately went to Hips Like Cinderella's bandcamp to grab a free download of the all the girls i know all of them EP, which I seriously recommend you do as well.  The whole EP is great, and I was equally struck by the dizzying dirge that is "haunted thoughts of you."  That song sounds like Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark covering ivansxtc, with its back-of-the-throat New Wave vocals sung on top of a slow-dance, shoe-gaze song structure.  Hips Like Cinderella, highly recommended.

Hips Like Cinderella - Haunting Thoughts Of You

bandcamp / Blog / Facebook / twitter

Flower Orgy

Lo-fi folk-pop quartet Flower Orgy made the rounds across the blogosphere with their autumn 2010 single "Boneyard," a blown-out, fuzzed-up ear-fuck of a song that's equal parts grungy and jangly.  The group has a cassette out on The Curatorial Club, which can only mean great things for them (see Twin Sister and Games).  You can grab three songs from the cassette over at the group's Bandcamp.  Sounds like a brighter Neutral Milk Hotel recorded in a field during a camping trip to the Green Mountains.  The first half of that last sentence is an opinion statement; the second half is an actual fact!  Flower Orgy's debut cassette can be yours for just $7 (or $11 international).  Order it here.

Flower Orgy- Country Side
Flower Orgy - Boneyard

(Props to McGregor)