New Music: The Verve

It's finally here. The Verve's long-awaited new album showed up yesterday, and it was worth the wait. The whole album is an enjoyable listen, but "Valium Skies", "Love Is Noise", and "Noise Epic" bring you right back to "Urban Hymns"-era greatness.

Live Music: New Killers

The new Killers single has surfaced in the form of a ton of live videos. It's called "Spaceman", and it sounds like it could be good in the right studio. Brandon always had great ideas and sounded fantastic in the studio (at least on Hot Fuss), but the bottom line is that his voice doesn't hold up well live AT ALL. But the song sounds like it's got a lot of potential behind it, so there's still hope for their new album "Day and Age".

New Music: Ra Ra Riot

After being completely let down by the new Dandy Warhols album, I was lifted back up by a new album that could end up being one of my favorite records of the year: Ra Ra Riot's debut "The Rhumb Line". They're in the indie vein of Broken Social Scene and Rilo Kiley, but with more strings. It's gorgeous work, and they deserve all the indie hype that Vampire Weekend scooped up a few months ago.

Music Videos: Morningwood

I know for a fact that many of you will hate this video. Do I care? Not really. Because I know half of you will love it, and I've never wasted my time shying away from polarizing music before anyway, so yall should be used to it by now. It's Morningwood's new video for "Sugarbaby", and it's as good as ridiculous obscure pop music can be. Warning: this video induces strokes in the brains of hipsters. You've been warned.



Although honestly, even I have to admit that the puppet turning into a real girl at the end was cheesy as fuck.

Live New Music: Jenny Lewis's "Acid Tongue"

I'm already in love with this song and I've only heard the live version. It's called "Acid Tongue", and it's fucking gorgeous. You can call 888-717-2243 to hear the studio version, which I plan on doing as soon as I submit this post.

New Music: The Faint

The best release of the week that you probably have heard nothing about: The Faint, whose new album "Fasciinatiion", is quirktastic all the way through. Check out "The Geeks Were Right" for instant dance rock goodness.

Live Music: RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

You know a show's good when it requires three police interventions. Rage Against the Machine's Lollapalooza set, by all accounts, was phenomenal, and this vid of their opener ("Testify") should be all the proof you need.

Covers: Joe's "Before I Cheat"

Recently, an R&B artist named Joe (just Joe, no last name of any kind) remixed up Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats" to suit his point of view and covered it for Yahoo's music site. His version is called "Before I Cheat", and he sells the hell out of it. Mainstream R&B has been so watered down in recent years, so it's cool to hear an R&B singer with a strong enough voice to show some real depth and emotion.

Live Music: The Distillers

Show of hands, who else misses The Distillers? Here's an old classic clip from a couple years ago of them playing "The Hunger" live at Reading.

"DON'T GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Live Covers: Clem Snide indie-fies "Beautiful"

Clem Snide, one of the most clever, relatable, and honest songwriters making music right now, is firmly rooted in the world of indie and alternative, but he has no elitism towards mainstream music. Here he is putting his own loveable, quirky spin on Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" like he owns it.

Music Videos: Gnarls Barkley

"Who's Gonna Save My Soul" was one of "The Odd Couple"'s instant standouts, and now it's got its very own video. The song is completely heartbreaking from start to finish (and 100% of the credit goes to Cee-Lo... it's not the instruments, it's not the lyrics, it's that VOICE), but they still manage to use their usual crazy-ass style in the video even under such tragic circumstances.

By the way, in case you were on the fence about taking time out of your day to watch the whole thing, the video features a human heart singing the blues on a countertop using a piece of broccoli as a microphone before giving up and stabbing itself and apparently giving birth to the person that the heart came from as it dies. I made none of that up, it's all in there.

Old Music Videos: PJ Harvey

Since nothing I care about was released today, I'm going to dig into the archives of Youtube and pull up one of my all-time videos: the amazingly simple but completely badass video for PJ Harvey's "This Is Love". No effects or flashy edits to distract you from how fucking talented she is. The mp3 doesn't do the song justice; watching the artist herself do her thing with so much presence adds a hell of a lot to the song.

Random Track of the Day: Old 97s

Welcome to one of the universe's most underrated songs. The Old 97's have a loyal but small following, and my favorite O97 song has always been "Adelaide", but it seems to have been forgotten by everyone else. It was nowhere on their best of album, and there's not a single clip of the song on Youtube outside of a scene on "Veronica Mars" that the song was used very well in. Check out the song and spread the word.

Instrumental Covers: "Time Is Running Out" by Four Cellos

The title says it all. It's like Muse, but more fancy-sounding.

Live Music: The Black Angels

The Black Angels can only make one specific type of song (Dark, trippy, psych-rock), but they're so amazing at producing that one sound that it's completely forgivable. Here's them performing "Black Grease" a couple days ago in New Orleans.