Sound Check's Blog Posts Tagged 'Indie' (18)

UK indie rapper Mikill Pane's main appeal has always been his endless cleverness and charm. He just seems like the kind of guy you'd like to get a beer with. Maybe go bowling. His lyrics are a tangled web of references, meta-references, and elaborate puns. They've always been deep from a writing perspective, but never exactly deep emotionally. On…

Oakland's Afro-indie-pop quartet Bells Atlas released their debut EP this week and it's a beautiful beautiful thing. The band combines minimal beats with lush textures and the multi-layered vocals of lead singer Sandra Lawson-Ndu. The three songs and two remixes on the EP show a young band in complete control of their sound. With influences ranging from chillwave to samba to indie rock to Afrobeat, the Bells Atlas EP sounds like almost nothing else on the planet. It's rare that…

Indie psychedelic band The Tontons announced their spring tour dates. Visit http://thetontons.com/ for updates.…

While Brooklyn wasn't paying attention, Oakland seems to have snuck up and stolen our crown as the center of adventurous independent music. Between The Seshen and the new Bells Atlas (not to mention longtime favorites like The Coup and Blood Sugar X), saying “we're from Oakland” is turning into shorthand for “you haven't heard shit like this…

Indie psychedelic band The Tontons are back after their stellar Golden EP with a new single. (The Tontons are of course not to be confused with the Tauntauns from ice planet Hoth). The A-side of the Bones 7” is a spacey, but dance-rock infected jam. Fittingly titled “Bones 1” it's a song about living in the here and now and celebrating youth and freedom. “One of these days, we'll have some kids, picket fences, mortgages … but today's not that day / and I'm not…

Who says nothing good comes out of Jersey? (Well everyone in Brooklyn, pretty much, but whatever. This isn't about which land mass adjacent to Manhattan is better...Because it's clearly Brooklyn.) Bringing my total of things I like from New Jersey up to a solid 3, Sunny Gang is a fresh quartet out of Rutgers. Their music is a rad mix of party rock and hip hop; working overtime to rehabilitate rap/rock’s…

There's gotta be something in the water in DC. How is that a city which is home to some of the worst humanity has to offer (just mint the damn coin and shut up about the debt ceiling, OK?) has produced some of the most inventive musicians of the last 25 years. DC ex-pat, now based out of LA, Taiwo Heard's first single “Frontier to Eternity” earns it's place in the pantheon of DC indie music by being strange and surprisingly catchy.…

Jangly indiepop can be a dangerous proposition. There's a fine balance between personal weirdness (we used to call it quirk, but Zoe Deschanel ruined that word forever. Thanks a lot.) and traditional pop songwriting. The wrong balance can leave you sounding twee, phony, or just hopelessly unapproachable to anyone other than jangle purists. But there's little better than when someone nails that balance. Madame So's new EP “Sell-by Date” hits all the right notes. (Even the ones…

It's been almost 2 months since Hurricane Sandy devastated the coastal areas of New York City, and there are still tens of thousands without power, heat, or adequate shelter. Some of the images that have come out of the hurricane are truly surreal, from stretches of Rockaway Park stripped of its trademark beaches to the pictures of a blacked out downtown Manhattan with only the Goldman Sachs building lit up (and if that's not a metaphor, I don't know what is...). Indie rapper…

Equal parts driving/danceable and spacey/chill, Wishes and Thieves' latest Forest Fire EP is a perfect peace of dreamy indie pop. The band is anchored by a rhythm section that seems determined to steal Bloc Party's crown of superhuman tightness (because obviously art is a competition, right? Oh. Right.) Dreamy synths wash over the songs painting everything with the surreal colors of expired film. Lead singer Jolanda Porter presides over the band, simultaneously cool and…

With gas determined to hover around $4/gal (or if you're in New York or New Jersey post-Sandy, $infinity/gal...), it makes sense that bike culture is getting mainstreamed in a big way right now. Enter UK indie rapper Mikill Pane with his new EP Dirty Rider.

The title track is an ode to fixed gear bikes.…

Having come of age musically in the late 90's, when the marriage of rock and hip-hop was mangled so badly it became criminal to even suggest, I get a serious thrill when I hear someone do it right. And holy crap does Afropunk member Labtekwon get it right! Channeling HR by way of Immortal Technique on the single “Slamdancin” from his forthcoming record Hardcore, Labtekwon makes hip-hop that dares to be rough…

The past few years have seen an increasing percentage of the music scene mining the vaults of Stax records circa 1968 in search of lost singles for inspiration. And why shouldn't they? There's some great shit in there. But retro savants The Heavy have picked a different corner of the Stax catalog for their muse; that sublime period around '71 when some of soul's best songwriters made the switch from songwriter to film composer. Outfitting their soul+indie formula with lush…

The Dears' new live album (their fourth) was recorded at the Pasaguero nightclub in Mexico City. If the leaked unmixed songs are any indication, the full set will draw heavily from their 2011 release Degeneration Street. The long-running band is tight as ever, with a touch of indie jangle, you know, to keep it authentic. Like their previous live records, they play around with their own songs, stretching Degeneration Street's lead single “Omega Dog” through waves of feedback and…

British indie soul-rock outfit The Heavy have a new single out, and it's huge. On their 3rd album the band “wanted to make a bold statement – it’s not shy.” The orchestral swoops add a level of epicness when matched with Spencer Page's distorted bass indie thump. Singer Kelvin Swaby describes it saying “We went pretty cinematic, setting out to score a film that hasn’t been written.” I'd be surprised if filmmakers don't take them up on it later this year. This is the rare sort of…

Championing a genre of music fittingly called “Ballroom Rock,” Blah Blah Blah are definitely a band deserving of your attention. Their first two EPs, Thank You Thank You and the aptly titled Charm, serve up a dynamic mix of ethereal ambiance and loud badassery. Solomon's voice soars to Jeff Buckley-esque heights on the first single 'Why Am I The Only One Laughing.' The impossibly joyous song 'Soon As I Get Home Tonight' with it's equally…

Petite Noir is the nom de guerre of Yannick Illunga; singer for the indie-electro-pop band Popskarr. Born in Belgium and now based out of Cape Town, the singer/songwriter/producer just released his debut single 'Till We Ghosts / The Dance.' The track and it's B-side blend African rhythms with chillwave production and indie sensibilities all topped with a creamy strawberry Joy Division frosting of sadness and reverb.…