Remember how Sick Boy in Trainspotting quit heroin at the same time as Renton, just to show how easily he could do it? The Cthulhus bully Nathan Williams in the same way; they’re clearly mining Wavves territory, and yet they do it so effortlessly.

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You’d be wise to catch one of Whispering Pines’ live gigs around L.A. or pick up Family Tree at the local record shop. There aren’t too many self-released debut albums of this quality coming out these days.

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Download: John Bellows “Bare To The Bone”

(from Clean Your Clock out now on Moniker)
Newly reissued subterranean psych/etc. from the guy who helped bring the world the awesome Death and JT IV records last year!

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Infinite Body is an exploration of the ecstatic—tone and distortion that bubble and spark like the surface of a star. His album Carve Out the Face of My God is out now on PPM and he warns listeners not to fall into a tropical volcano. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

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The Light Rays’ lo-fi, up-tempo, reverb-saturated pop has echoes of the Cleaners From Venus or the Clean—but those are merely reference points to navigate by, not albatrosses around their necks. The Light Rays pull off the parlor trick of being fairly straightforward yet compellingly original. If only every group from Orange County could be as cool.

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Download: MGMT “Flash Delirium”

(from Congratulations out Apr. 13 on Columbia)

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Year Long Disaster’s new album—as hinted by the giant black cat hanging out on its cover—is heavily influenced by Mikhail Bulgakov’s masterpiece The Master And Margarita, in which a sympathetic devil reveals a tiny bit of reality to the people of Moscow. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

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Lemon Sun has a had a good week.
The songs “Same Old Ground” and “Congratulate Our Thievery” have been chosen as INTERNATIONAL SONGWRITING COMPETITION finalists out of over 15,000 entries.
Here’s a reason why it was good to shell out the entry fee and get these judges listening:
Tom Waits, James Mercer (The Shins), Robert Smith, Jerry Lee [...]

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Picture yourself on a boat on a river, riding on the wave of a musical crescendo as you’re taken by a hazy groove and the swell of an organ … and then the drugs take effect. The new EP from Los Angeles-based quintet Spirit Vine offers three psychedelically fueled tracks that synesthetically alter the senses and tantalize the ear’s taste buds.

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Download: Crystal Antlers “Dead Horses”

(from the self-titled 45 available now from Crystal Antlers! Click here to get both tracks free!)

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