Hunx Picks Valentine’s Day Gifts For Your Sweetie

Posted on 6 February 2012 | 12:36 pm
“It may sound funny, but your love is here to stay,” Hunx sweetly sings on the opener of his forthcoming solo debut, Hairdresser Blues. The proudly gay garage rocker is known for outrageous live performances that pair his outsized, often literally-in-your-face persona with his lovelorn, girl-group-inspired tunes. He bared it all for a Girls video [...]

eMusic Loves Palmist Records

Posted on 6 February 2012 | 10:35 am
Palmist Records is that best of little indie ventures – the highly impractical labor of love. Run as a side venture of the venerable FatCat Records, Palmist collects limited vinyl runs of interesting artists and releases them, A/B style. That’s it. Generally speaking, it’s the rougher, more bedroom-pop side of the indie-rock work they traffic [...]

Boy Friend, Egyptian Wrinkle

Posted on 6 February 2012 | 9:04 am
Christa Palazzolo and Sarah Brown first gained notice as two-thirds of Sleep ∞ Over, anAustinoutfit specializing in funereal nu-gaze music. The pair formed Boy Friend in late 2010, with the single “Lovedropper” (included here) winning acclaim last summer. They claim they recorded their debut “surrounded by dogs, bongos and warm Texan vibes,” but it sounds [...]

Die Antwoord, Ten$ion

Posted on 3 February 2012 | 4:18 pm
Not even the otherworldly, questionably authentic personalities behind South African rave-rappers Die Antwoord are immune to dance music’s global takeover. Thanks to beatmaster DJ Hi-Tek, scuzzy techno figured largely into $o$, the manic debut from MC Ninja and his mulletized lady sidekick, Yo-Landi Vi$$er. But their newest effort oozes mainstream oomph-oomph: “Never Le Nkemise” skids [...]

Harmonious Thelonious, Listen

Posted on 3 February 2012 | 4:11 pm
Harmonious Thelonious are a dance geek’s dream, so rich is their music in resonances and intermingling echoes. In “Argwöhnische Muziek,” the track that opens Listen, you might hear the melodic patterns of West African highlife guitars echoed in tumbling synthetic pianos, Terry Riley’s minimalist compositions in its phased repetitions, or the cosmicChicago house music of [...]

Sale: GRAMMY®’s Greatest Hits

Posted on 3 February 2012 | 9:28 am
For more than 50 years now, the GRAMMYs have ignited the ire of the entire music industry more than Rebecca Black, Lana Del Rey and William Hung combined. Mostly because it always brings up one simple question: what did the Academy get right this year? As it turns out, more than you’d think — a [...]

Righteous Babe Radio

Posted on 2 February 2012 | 12:46 pm
The office folks at Righteous Babe Records put this playlist together for eMusic. It has some choice songs from the Righteous Babe catalog but also some friends, openers and influencers we either work with or just plain like to play. Hope you enjoy!

JEFF The Brotherhood, We Are the Champions

Posted on 2 February 2012 | 11:53 am
[As part of his eMusic Takeover, BBC DJ and indie taste-making legend Steve Lamacq chose five records for us to feature as Review of the Day. Here's what he had to say about JEFF The Brotherhood's We Are The Champions]: I always like bands that make records just because they need to. One of the [...]

Now On Sale: Air’s Back Catalog

Posted on 2 February 2012 | 8:49 am
With a name that translates to “Love, Imagination, Dream,” you’d think Air‘s spent most of their career in the clouds. While that may be the case with Moon Safari — the Parisian duo’s 1998 debut, a flawless collection of frothy downtempo standards — the rest of their records have attempted everything from art-damaged pop tracks [...]

Petra Jean Phillipson, Notes On: Death

Posted on 2 February 2012 | 8:45 am
Arriving six years after her debut album, Notes On: Love, U.K. singer-songwriter Petra Jean Phillipson’s second offering is an equally sombre, portentous and ambitious affair. A porcelain-skinned siren, Phillipson majors in a strain of ethereal, transcendent gothic folk music that is as indebted to Joni Mitchell as it is to Joanna Newsom. She delivers Notes [...]