SXSW

South By Southwest. Large indie music festival blah blah blah. Wish I was going blah blah blah. Bitter that I’m not so I’m not going to say much more than this blah blah blah. Go download TONS OF FREE MP3s from the artists that are playing it here, blah blah blah.

[Edit: I recommend the tracks from Bound Stems, The Captiol Years, The Changes, Coach Said Not To, The Dansetes, F For Fake, Gingerbread Patriots, Greyhounds, Jaymay, Low Skies, Lying In States, Magnet, Monsters Are Waiting, The Standard, and of course, the Velvet Teen.]

Some By Sea

One of the bands that I am upset to be missing at the aforementioned event (even though I’ve seen them a handful of times already) is Seattle’s Some By Sea. They’re hometown favorites, but it doesn’t seem like they’ve met their big break outside the Emerald City, though they certainly deserve to. Lots of people mention other hometown heroes Death Cab For Cutie in the same breath, and though the influence is there, I don’t think they’re so similar. Still, DCFC fans do have a tendency to enjoy SBS (possibly because lead singer Chris has a Ben Gibbard love that supposedly revials mine, or so I hear). It was a bitch trying to find their new song in MP3 form, so please appreciate the effort that I went through to get it by downloading “The Things We All Carry Around” RIGHT NOW.

Then visit their website, download more songs and buy their album(s).

Christopher Walla

Speaking of the ever so wonderful Death Cab For Cutie, I thought it time I give some love to another attractive boy genius in the group, Mr. Christopher Walla – partly because I find it incredibly adorable/humanizing that he has a myspace profile, and partly because he has some really interesting solo MP3s up on the website for Hall of Justice, his recording studio. I read in a (somewhat) recent interview with Chris that Ben was mostly the one holding the band back from doing more experimenting, wheras Chris claimed to be into it all along. At first I found this hard to believe, but after listening to his MP3s – well, I’m intrigued. Is it too soon for Death Cab to start working on their next album?

Fiery Furnaces

The new Fiery Furnaces, Bitter Tea, is allll over the place. To be honest, I never got that into them, their work is a little too much for me. This new stuff is a little more accessible at times, but still a bit strange, of course. Stereogum, Fluxblog, Gorilla vs. Bear and Said The Gramophone all posted new tracks, so here’s the round-up. “Police Sweater Blood Vow” is definitely my favorite of the four.

“Nevers” (download)
“Black-Hearted Boy” (download)
“Police Sweater Blood Vow” (download)
“Teach Me Sweetheart” (download)

Random: Loopy ‘lupe

This is ancient news by now, but for those of you who want to relive Project Runway contestant Guadalupe Vidal’s supposedly only alcohol-induced insanity, the good folks at bloggingprojectrunway have the video for your repeated viewing pleasure. (Not a Project Runway watcher? You’ll probably find it hilarious, anyway.)

Stay tuned for one helluva internial post tomorrow (no, really!), and maybe even a proposition for a regular posting schedule.

p.s. – if it weren’t for the charming Ricky Lewis telling me he’s been enjoying this blog, I probably would’ve procrastinated on posting this for at least another 24 hours. so thanks to Ricky!