Harriet: "American Appetite"

I suppose this single has been out for a few months but I'm just now catching up with this week's release of Harriet's debut album of the same title, American Appetite. There's an almost gospel-like urgency in the arrangement that no doubt owes a great deal to the contributions of keyboardist Alex Casnoff, who used to play in Dawes, one of the more sweeping, expansive sounding bands in the Americana/roots rock genre of the past decade. The spare logistics crescendo as the song peaks to swelling effect, with Casnoff's own vocals providing a warbling, uncertain counterpoint. Dawes' loss is Harriet's gain, and ours as well.

Tindersticks: "Were We Once Lovers?"

Tindersticks are pretty O.G. when it comes to this whole dialed down, darkened mellow shit. Starting off in the early 90's as an early, fairly straightforward chamber pop ensemble - think Belle & Sebastian on methadone but with surprisingly advanced musicianship - the band have spent the past two decades mutating that sound slightly but never deviating too jarringly from their central ethos. "Were We Once Lovers?" attests to this, the chamber pop elements subdued up front but gently creeping in over the gently shuffling indie pop backbone as the song advances.

Part Time: "Pussy of My Dreams"

Not sure how the title of this one made it past the SJW Shame Police, but suffice to say this cheeky little ditty is one of the more potty-mouthed odes to female empowerment since Nick Cave last opined about blue balls.

Feathered Arms: "Reload/Recharge"

It took 20 years, but the girl punk, not-quite-riot-grrl-but-right-there-on-the-fringes sound of female-driven, Pacific Northwest alt-rock circa 1992 has finally made its way to Sweden. "Reload/Recharge" has basically zero influences outside the brackets of 1988-1992, but it's all the better song for it, being a legitimately catchy tune making full use of a pre-existing template. If Belly staged a reunion they most likely couldn't come up with new material as compelling as what Feathered Arms have achieved here in their infancy.

White Sea: "Prague"

Your first thought might be "this doesn't deviate enough from the M83 template to warrant a side project", but damn if it doesn't deliver the goods. Yay, though White Sea is the "solo" debut of M83's Morgan Kibby, first single "Prague" is prefabbed ear sugar custom built for what's left of modern rock radio... after cleaning up that deceptively vulgar chorus, naturally.

Will you quickly tire of this song after 20-30 spins? Probably. Does that negate the value of those 20-30 spins? Not in the least.

Friends: "The Way"

The artwork screams Bitch or Lita Ford, but everything else - from the late night guitar to the sultry vocals - screams of a Prince protege circa 1985. It's been a minute since we heard from Friends, and "The Way" is miles from where we last left them, but apparently this is a pace car single for a sophomore album that's so far from being completed that all we know is it should be out sometime this year.

Joanna Gruesome: "Secret Surprise"

Joanna Gruesome are a Welsh band that do a good job of transcribing 90s Pacific NW punk and throwing in a dash of East Coast alt rock to boot. According the (probably apocryphal) press release, the Cardiff quintet met during anger management therapy. Do they even have such a thing as rage in Wales? Didn't think so.

Local Natives: "You & I"

The increased emphasis on nuanced, soulful singing as late seems to finally be putting a stake through the hearts of both one-dimensional emo singing and the flat, monotone singer-songwriter schtick (sorry, but having a shitty voice alone does not imbue your material with character). Local Natives are fresh out of Silver Lake, Los Angeles - a.k.a. Williamsburg West - and only two albums in they've already settled into a nice groove of accessible yet intelligently written indie pop. Basically the kind of thing you would expect given their origin (the cover of Hummingbird even plays on the uber-trend of 3D sidewalk art) though in practice they come off as more exceptional than typical.

Majical Cloudz: "Bugs Don't Buzz"

"The happiest songs end with a smile", Devon Welsh croons, but the way he's singing it you know up front this isn't going to be one of those songs. "Bugs Don't Buzz" has to be one of the more unrelentingly bleak pop songs in recent memory, an insistent piano chord underscoring the austere drudge of humanity. It's kind of pretty, no?

Part Time: "I Want to Go"

The weird thing about the intentionally damaged production on much of today's retro music is that, while it's clearly intended to resemble a worn cassette tape, it sounds just as much like the kind of bad MP3-encoding that was prevalent in the early days of Napster. Doesn't really matter, I guess, since I spent the turn of the millennium hunting down 80's one hit wonders that I hadn't heard in 10-15 years by that point. Hard to believe that an equivalent amount of time has passed since I first went self-consciously archival in my music collecting. Guess that's what listening to these throwback tunes will do for you.

Surfing: "Hollow Sparrow"

Surf is the new shoegaze, and the unimaginatively monikered quartet Surfing have obviously been listening to their Washed Out and Best Coast in addition to their My Bloody Valentine. Can they squeeze one more hit out of the genre before the bubble bursts? Probably not, but "Hollow Sparrow" is a pretty glorious failure if nothing else.

Hospital Ships: "If It Speaks"

I've been listening to a lot of early jazz lately and one thing that's struck me is that, on the vocal tracks, it was pretty common back in the day to front load the song with improvised soloing, with the singer not coming in until the midway point. Quite a switch from modernist preferences, which dictate that the singer is what everyone paid to hear and the "noodly" stuff should be saved for later in the cut. "If It Speaks" kind of harks back to that ethos, a slow, metronomic build up to a real nugget of a single. It's genuinely risky in that a lot of listeners who might have been totally into it as a pared down indie pop could potentially be turned off by the loose structure at the beginning. Don't be one of those guys.

Snowden: "So Red"

I always feel a twinge of homer guilt when I post an Austin band, wondering to myself whether I'm holding them to the same standards that I would if the group weren't from my hometown. Then it occurs to me that writers in other thriving music scenes like Brooklyn and Chicago would be willfully ignoring a lot of great bands if they took a pass on their own locals, so with that I bring you Snowden.

No One In Control is out May 14 on Serpents & Snakes Records.

(via Off the Radar):

Fryars: "On Your Own"

Watch this become a hit single in like 18 months. If you're still listening to the radio you're living in the past. Or, rather, if you subscribe to WKMR you're living in the future... yep, that's the ticket.

Freedom Fry: "With the New Crowd"

Half of Freedom Fry call Paris home, so the band name is clearly a tongue-in-cheek jab at a certain French response to the US invasion of Iraq (the most recent one; I should be specific). Friends and Enemies is apparently the third EP from this duo but the first I've heard this. "With the New Crowd" is a little early for the breezy summer beach crowd that it's airy, lightweight melody is shooting for, but with bands like Bleached and Best Coast in the mix I guess that's a year round phenomenon these days.

Bleached: "Next Stop"

For my money, if there's one surf rock / girl pop duo that can dethrone the hyped-to-death Best Coast it's Bleached, who we last jammed on over a year ago. Somehow, in spite of that chronology the sisters are just now getting around to putting out a full length album (via Dead Oceans). Looking forward to popping on some shades and checking these ladies out at SXSW in a few weeks.

KILLER COVERS || Selebrities: "Everywhere" [feat. Erika Spring & Lissy Trullie]

Been almost a year to the day that I last posted Selebrities. Guess it's about that time then. Just in time for Valentines Day (boooooooooo) they cover the old Christine McVie chestnut "Everywhere" from Fleetwood Mac's Waterloo, the 1987 last-stab-at-top-40-relevance album Tango in the Night. In spite of my snark it's actually pretty underrated in a pure pop sorta way. Assisting with harmony are friends of the band Erika Spring and Lissy Trullie.

Lovely Things is out June 25 on Cascine, who are being rather coy about whether this song will reappear.

(via Gorilla vs Bear)

Shout Out Louds: "Blue Ice"

For all the obtuse artists skewing the sounds of 80's new wave into something dense and impermeable, occasionally there comes along an act that plays it basically straight while still managing to showcase pop smarts of their own. Shout Out Louds are from Sweden, so that helps; "Blue Ice" occupies a middle spot equidistant between the Mexican standoff trio of Level 42, Simply Red and Chris Rea. You could substitute dozens of other acts but one gets the idea I presume.

Optica is out February 26 on Merge.

Wild Belle: "Keep You"

I feel like back in the 80's and 90's (plus much of the 00's) if your band managed to score an appearance on the late night talk show circuit - Leno, Letterman, etc - you either had a hit single in the can already, or that break was the thing that scored it for you. In 2012 the talk show circuit has definitely gotten hipper (you often get the impression that Letterman has absolutely no idea what to make of the bands on his show) but at the same time the perceived value of these bookings has dropped way, way off.

To wit: Wild Belle have been all over late night recently and yet they don't have a fucking Wikipedia page to their name yet. For that matter they have yet to release a full length, with only a handful of songs to their credit. Still, one listen to "Keep You" and it's hard not to think that this would have been an instant hit on 1990's radio.

The Octopus Project: "Whitby"

As far as Austin-based retro synth bands go, Ghostland Observatory gets all the love (and a lot of backlash to go with it), to the extent that fellow townies The Octopus Project have been quietly playing wallflower to Ghostland's raging kegger for years now. A lot of that probably has to do with O.P.'s sound oscillating wildly between eclectic genres of synth-friendly tuneage. "Whitby" is about as accessible as the band get, with the lion's share of the quartet's more esoteric energy apparently being funneled into this maniac music video.

The Whitby EP is already out on Peek-A-Boo.