Song of the Day

Archive for February, 2011

Alex Winston’s a singer songwriter with plenty of high pitched fun pop rocks for your ears. I just found her on Pitchfork the other day and this song popped out to me right away. The lo-fi quality to the video doesn’t lend much credibility to the professionalism of her image but it does confirm the indie singer songwriter grassroots nature of her beginnings. I prefer not to watch the music video when listening to the song, maybe because all the editing and symbolic gestures in the video lead my imagination to a place where I get distracted from the music.

I recommend listening to her other two popular songs, Choice Notes and Sister Wife too. Her voice reminds me of the girl from the Cardigans while her songs could be in a Pippy longstockings soundtrack. Yet, despite the adolescent thoughts that her songs conjure up, there is a complexity and depth to them that demands respect. I missed writing a Song of the Day post yesterday. I’d love to get more suggestions. If you have any song suggestions for the Song of the Day blog, please email them to me, or post them in the comment section below, or Tweet them to my Twitter page or comment on the FB page.

UPDATE: YouTube took down the embedding of this song, but I recovered it on Vimeo. If you’re looking for songs like Locomotive by Alex Winston I recommend listening to her other two popular songs, Choice Notes and Sister Wife,but this blog has tons of music by other female vocalists and singer songwriters that you’ll love. So I just found the song Locomotive Alex Winston by google searching listen to Locomotive song by Alex Winston and clicking on all the links, but many of them were not playable. So I feel lucky that I found this playable version of the video that works. ENJOY!!!!

There’s a lot of bands whose sound I’m reminded of when I listen to The Go! Team, their style of power pop, candy chorus, 70′s lo-fi, action-theme song, and percussive cheer-leading vocals mixes so many different sounds that they’re familiar on their first listen. That’s why their songs are so easily likable, the catch is that they can take all that noise and use it well. I just learned about them the other day while listening through NPR’s Song of the Day list, and decided they needed a repeat showing here on the blog. Go Team Go!

Baths kicks ass. There’s a lot to say here, I’m feeling less explicit today so I’m just going to say that I have huge respect for Baths or Will Wiesenfeld or [Post-Foetus]. As well, whoever makes the calls on his music videos also gets my kudos.

If you’re turned off by the sound I think perhaps your criteria for beauty in sound is too restrictive. If you love this stuff then please spread the word. I wish I could fill up this entire Song of the Day blog with tunes like this, but there is plenty of other good indie music that doesn’t fall into the electronic experimental glitch-hop lo-fi ambient genre.

I’m just going to go ahead and post both of Baths’ two other top songs (per Last.fm) because I like them both as well and figured I might as well save you a click or two. Here they are…

Lovely Bloodflow


… and Aminals

I think I just realized what the problem is with music today. PROPRIETY!!! The reason why music suffers sometimes and why good music is hard to find is that people don’t share enough, and that’s because of money and the fact that our culture does not spend money on art and music. No, instead we spend at least half of our energy and funds on building bombs to destroy things, bullets to kill people, chemicals to speed up the growth of our subsidized genetically modified food, and research how to find ways to make people dependent on drugs so they come back every month to buy more of the drug instead of actually curing people.

My point here really is that artists should be collaborating more. Just like how gene pools require and benefit from a constant mix of diversity, just like eco-systems, music needs more marriages of two diverse styles. It’s a fact, when you mix two creative and vibrant things that come from different backgrounds but that are from the same species you get the most beautiful results. I present this song to you to help illustrate my point.

Upon previewing the songs from both the band Planet Funk and the DJ producer Benny Benassi, I could not find a song that either band produced that had more richness than this one. Now, that could also mean that when you combine the total sum of time that both artists spent on the song in their own respect perhaps there was more energy poured into this song, but that’s also kind of the point. From new blood, collaboration, sharing of ideas, and having a creative dialog you get things like “The Postal Service”, “Zero 7″, and a whole slough of other bands that I can’t think of right now because it’s late and listing a bunch of bands isn’t important, because I think this point illustrates itself.

So basically, I wish more remixes were made, I wish artists started out with more “Open Source” rights to their work or collaboration was facilitated more.

It produced great results, and makes for great Songs of the Day!

This indie pop rock band from Bogota Columbia (the home of the .CO domain extension) has a spunk to their melody that I have to give them credit for. They aren’t your average punk band and push the vocals a bit harder and with more grit than Avril Lavigne. I give them a thumbs up and hope they get the exposure they deserve.
“I am the author of this Song of the Day blog and I support this message.”

Seems like the Song of the Day is disgraced by two guys doing their best to waste $30K, but hey, it makes for good watching and is a fun song. Also, being that I live in Vegas, it seemed appropriate! You may have also seen another of their songs featuring the well known video of naked girls walking down a street in public in these guys’ home country of France called “Baby Baby“.

I found this artist through NPR’s Song of the Day blog and wanted to share it because of the power of the song which comes through the slow pace and deep beautiful vocal harmony. The minimalistic quality of the song lends to the gravity of its message and force. Take a look at the making of the music video for Love More. I hope this new indie artist finds all the support she needs as her music is a blessing to us all.

Indie House Acid House Song of the Day by French DJ in Manchester Laurent Garnier with an amazing music video accompaniment.

This song Changes off of Van She’s 2008 album V is an upbeat indie pop song that takes you on a quick bouncing tour of good feelings. Their music video which is a compilation of still images from their tour fits the song well, although makes me a little mentally nauseous sometimes as it’s frenetic pace feels like watching a film in fast forward. Their other songs are worth checking out as they are not all very similar. The one main theme in their music is the incorporation of electric synth sounds and the timeless neon reflecting on metal kind of bright lights in Vegas drug induced kind of mood they project. Besides this song of the day Van She has several other music videos to check out an enjoy, because they have a variety to their music I recommend giving their other songs a listen too.

This song Buttons off of the Weeks’ 2008 album Comeback Cadillac is their biggest song off the album in terms of exposure. The indie rock band from the South has a clean hard sound with an emotional thoughtfulness that makes them stand out to me much more than the biggest rock bands I can think of which seem to usually sing about lust and sex. The song reminds me of adolescent love and how fleeting love is in the spring of our time, but as I get older and as a youthful heart is only defined by how you see the world and not how many years of experience you have, I find the energy of the moving and believe I’ll find it so in the decades to come.

This band and song is extremely worthy of gracing my Song of the Day blog because of the quality and effectiveness of their sound as well as the seemingly small visibility they have on other websites.

Well here’s to them.

The music video is also entertaining and reminds me of all the time and energy and years of work it sometimes takes bands having to play just about anywhere, including the national record store circuit in order to build a fan base.

If you like my blog please feel free to send music recommendations my way to promote your favorite lesser known bands or music artists and to help others find and discover new indie music. Also subscribe to this Song of the Day blog on Facebook and Twitter using the links at the very top center of this page under the “Song of the Day” title.