Song of the Day

Archive for the ‘Indie’ Category

This song is elegant, intimate, strong, comforting, personal, and enchanting. I only heard it for the first time on the local Las Vegas user selected music station, Jelli.com here http://www.jelli.com/kyli/.

Also, I found a remixed version of the song, or perhaps the full-length version of the song, in full house music style, with a different video on YouTube, entitled…

Goodwill Feat. Hook N Sling – Take You Higher (Original Mix) Magh Video Edit

I don’t pay much attention to the Grammy’s so I didn’t really find out about Bon Iver until a few months ago. But have since set my alarm clock to play Calgary and Holocene. Really beautiful stuff. And I have a respect for their thoughts and vocalization of the music industry and Grammy’s as well. Justin Vernon, the founding singersongwriter behind Bon Iver, spoke at the Grammy’s and spoke truth to the masses about the massive volume of music, artistic talent, and culture that never gains any attention or recognition from the pop culture and mega entertainment run music industry speakerphones. See the clips here.
– Justin Vernon
– Backstage at Grammy’s

Also here’s my other favorite song by Bon Iver, Calgary.

Ben Folds Five has been in my beautiful song factory book since high school, with their songs like Brick, Army, Song for the Dumped, etc. Apparently they have a new album coming out. The poor economy has a way of taking people out of perfectly good jobs and getting them back into exotic locales like recording studios. But good for us since their music is awesome, often melancholy and deeply emotive, but still awesome!

Polica is new, got a recommendation from my sister to post this song. Really enjoy it. Take a look at her song “Amongster” too. Subtle, powerful, haunting, sexy music.

Polica Amongster

After watching this video a couple times, before I saw that it was slamming up the charts and getting massive views on YouTube. Actually it wasn’t just this song that was going to hit big. It’s Gotye in general. The drums in this track were just too addicting and the music video kept me watching to find out what conclusion would come of the journey of the spider boats. And I found a friend in the environmentalist perspective that we can see our own destruction as a civilization creeping towards us with the knowledge that ‘all that it could have been avoided‘. Gotye’s vocal strengths remind me of emotive tracks from Snow Patrol and even One Republic, but their sound has a much more exciting tripping percussive use of sound. Their melodies and mixtures of percussion excite all my electronic taste buds and make anxious to hear all of Gotye’s songs. Also see the two great tracks below by Gotye, Somebody That I Used To Know (feat. Kimbra), and Save Me.

Gotye – Somebody That I Used To Know (feat. Kimbra)

Gotye – Save Me

BAM! Swimclub! Feel those groovy indie pop rock tunes. Cleanse your mind and relationship with a casual honest poem showing your girl the reasons why the way she acts around you doesn’t match what she says she wants with your relationship. Sometimes you’ve got to let that girl go, because in this case, she’s a bit confused. There’s a peace in the presence of mind that the words of this song come from. Gently, honestly, tell her you want to be alone for these reasons. I’m so sorry girl but, I can’t believe it’s me, that you want now, that you want now, that you want now.

Everything to me by LIPS Songs

Relax, sit back and let the day unwind, let go of the struggle and enjoy the moment. Lips Songs brings the gentle casio synth into the background of our day like a soft breeze on a cool august evening. The minimalistic and humble pace of this Brooklyn New York solo artist is true easy listening. There’s a slight Corrine Bailey Rae cuteness that is inexorable but pleasant and brings an sweet innocence to the tracks. You could just reach out and pinch the song’s cheeks.

Hear all Lips Songs’ tracks on SoundCloud.

THE WOMBATS – TECHNO FAN - from The Found Collective on Vimeo.

Indie Rock Band The Wombats are a 3 man group from Liverpool England that started in 2003. They’ve released two albums which you can hear on their website and MySpace page. You can also follow them on Twitter.

Great music video and great song! The music video is a compilation of left-over footage from a recording that was picked up and integrated into a visual editing program that sliced it up into this amazing animation. Theses guys do a fantastic job of taking the best of indie, rock, electronic, and new wave sound and compiling it into this killer track.

The song is about a guy who’s invited by a girl to join her at a techno concert, although it’s not his sound, he ends up going and realizes he’s a techno fan, which is a funny thing to sing about when the song itself isn’t a techno song, but maybe the point isn’t so much that he’s realizing that he likes techno music, but rather that he’s fallen in love with a girl who loves techno music.

Despite the lack of explicit publicity and direct expositionary language from the creators of this video, there is a lot still communicated through the song and video, several other music videos with similar themes were released on the same YouTube channel for “iamamiwhoami”. The artist in the video undoubtedly is Jonna Lee a Swedish singersongwriter. The YouTube phenomenon saw this video “y” release after others entitled b, o, u-1, u-2, n, t; all spelling “bounty”. There are some additional anonymous and mysterious things surrounding the project, which can be read on the Last.fm description, including the anonymous acceptance of the Swedish Grammy Award for “Innovator of the Year” in 2011.

There are several aspects to the creation that is this music video, the meaning of the lyrics in the context of the music video, the music video itself and what it portrays, and the greater relationship of this music video to the others released by this artist and what it means for us as music fans, listeners, and lovers of art and things of beauty.

First to summarize everything, to save you from reading everything I write, below, let me say that I love this song, on many different levels and that all are due their own respect. The music video portrays an abstract fantasy world without very much explained, however, my best interpretation is that the artist is an individual who has become aware of the truths of our world, the lesser known or fully understood horrors of our world that humanity has reaped over the years and still today against the natural environment on which we all depend and also upon each other. However, there is hope, not great hope, but still chance for us to find salvation and to heal the damage that has been done to us.

The knight represents the ignorant systems of our world carelessly fulfilling a mission of violence upon a misunderstood enemy, ourselves and our world for short term gains and pride. While the king represents a humbled and destroyed earth that has suffered greatly and whose kingdom is near its end. The impaling of the knight is a just revenge from nature executed by some unknown force. The tone of the video is somber, and the lack of exposition or (explanatory language) forces us to try to make sense of it. Maybe the average person might not know what any of this might mean and that’s why I’m writing about it.

I will write more about the other aspects of the video later. Feel free to write your own interpretations in the comments below. And please share this Song of the Day blog with others.

The latest video that they released is entitled “;john“, watch it below.

The Hold Steady’s new album Heaven is Whenever released last year is the next level up for the indie rock band from Brooklyn, NY. The band is touring the US right now so check out their official The Hold Steady website for tour dates, videos and more.

The band has done a couple music videos, but if you do some YouTube searches you’ll find a ton of fan made ones which came from a video contest they held. Other great songs of their to check out are:

Chips Ahoy!

You Can Make Him Like You – Your audio isn’t broken, keep watching.

Hurricane J

Also, listen to their playlist on The Hold Steady’s MySpace page.