Kevin Cole

Originally from Hot Chip's latest album Freakout/Release. “The verses are [..] also about Samuel Beckett giving Andre the Giant lifts to school, and about how Beckett must have learned a lot from Andre’s wisdom.” For a more detailed recounting of the Beckett/André story by none other than The Princess Bride's Cary Elwes, here you go: bit.ly

Private Caller remix. This Welsh brother duo’s debut album is a masterfully crafted blend of UK garage, techno and other electronic grooves, combining propulsive rhythms, shimmering synths, chopped-up, manipulated vocal samples and soaring, melancholy-tinged melodies. www.kexp.org Overmono were voted the UK's best live act by DJ Mag readers in 2021: djmag.com

From the 10th anniversary deluxe edition of Give Up! thepostalservice.bandcamp.com The "District" in the song's title is a reference to Washington, D.C. (known colloquially as "The District" by its inhabitants) where Ben Gibbard's girlfriend at the time had moved.

Long Light is the Seattle based producer's 9th full length album and was released just recently! lusineweb.com

Tame Impala remix! This is from a Confidence Man-released remix album called "RE-TILT", a collection of seven remixes of tracks from their recent album, "TILT". Additional remixes by CHAI, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Daniel Avery and more - confidenceman.bandcamp.com You can stream the entire thing for free: ffm.to

Confidence Man Remix! Released in 2020. Find this remix from the Manchester, UK band here: bit.ly

(Paul Oakenfold's) Perfecto mix Formerly known mononymously as Oakenfold, is an English record producer, remixer and trance DJ. He has provided over 100 remixes for over 100 artists including U2, Moby, Madonna, Britney Spears, Massive Attack, the Cure, New Order, the Rolling Stones, the Stone Roses and Michael Jackson. Oakenfold was voted the No. 1 DJ in the World twice in 1998 and 1999 by DJ Magazine.

New Brimheim! The Faroe Islands' Brimheim, aka Helena Rebensdorff, confides that 'Literally Everything' is about "the overwhelming impulse to sacrifice everything, including my self respect, in exchange for a moment of admiration." tinyurl.com

Performing @ Climate Pledge Arena on October 6 (tonight!) & 7 (tomorrow!).. with The Postal Service! - www.deathcabforcutie.com Death cab for cutie remixed by CHVRCHES sounds like a great idea right? Well it is :)

Hailing from Northern Ireland's County Armagh, Conchúr White today announces his debut album Swirling Violets out 19th January 2024 via Bella Union and available to preorder. To accompany the announcement White has shared the striking first single “I Did Good Today”. Part compulsive confessional, part plea, Conchúr White’s dreamy reflection on the longing for validation traces an arc towards a lustrous, sighing chorus with weightless fluency. Between his impressionistic lyrics and luminous backdrops, the first dispatch from White’s incoming debut album seems to glow from within. Commenting on the track Conchúr - pronounced Conor - White says: “I Did Good Today is a song about craving validation but understanding that such approval can come at the expense of honesty or integrity. Musically I reference the likes of Midlake, Aldous Harding and Bleachers. The track was recorded in a Belfast church with producers Danny Morgan Ball and Kris Platt and mixed in London by Matt Wiggins.”

Performing @ Climate Pledge Arena on October 6 (tonight!) & 7 (tomorrow!).. with The Postal Service! - www.deathcabforcutie.com Ben Gibbard explained that it's not about him or even a specific person, but the girl in the song is an amalgamation of various women he's encountered. In the band's 2011 Storytellers special, Gibbard said that he often gets visions of familiar character types and places them in different settings when he writes songs. He said: "This song is about a person who came to me one day and said she wanted to be written about. So it's not really my story as much as it is hers."

Playing at The Vera Project on October 15! theveraproject.org Singapore's Subsonic Eye first formed in 2015, when lead vocalist Nur Wahidah and guitarist Daniel Castro Borces met at school. The pair bonded over their shared love of music, and while they initially started writing songs for fun, the pastime quickly turned into a full on passion. They would eventually go on to add Jared Lim (guitar), Lucas Tee (drums), and Sam Venditti (bass), but the DIY spirit of that initial encounter between Wahidah and Borces remains a driving force behind their music. "We also love that it really just feels like five friends hanging out and jamming some tunes. We have a very loose approach to things and no one is really the main ‘leader’ so everyone’s opinion equally matters. It’s a very collaborative effort." That egalitarian approach is a driving force behind All Around You. "Performative," the explosive album-opener, vents the frustrations of a generation forced to bear witness to societal and ecological deterioration and the unwillingness of power establishments to do anything about it. Wahidah notes how "Fake activism, timid skeptics unable to connect mankind/scared of middlemen walk off guilt-free, leave it for the next century" creating a sense of hopelessness and nihilism in the general populace ("Hands outstretched, now I don’t even know if I’m working, dying, for who and what"). tinyurl.com

This song from Maltese/UK ensemble ĠENN, features backing vocals from John Newton of JOHN. UNUM IS OUT EVERYWHERE NOW! "In all honesty, we can’t quite believe it’s finally out in the world. If there's one thing that's true about this band is that we see obstacles and rejections as challenges. It hasn’t been the easiest road - and everything we've done to get this record out has been the culmination of years of hard work. Anyone who knows our story knows that unum isn't just our debut album as ĠENN: it's literally our way of flipping off an industry that at times, can be downright disheartening. unum is about us: our bond, our inspirations, our cultures and backgrounds...all meshed into one. We poured our hearts and souls into this one. We hope you like it" tinyurl.com www.clashmusic.com

Caroline Polacheck last collaborated with Charlie XCX on the 2021 single New Shapes. Polacheck's latest album Desire, I Want to Turn Into You arrived on Valentine’s Day 2023! She just posted the For Your Consideration banner for the 2024 Grammys: twitter.com

AK_DK Remix Evie hosted Ibibio Sound Machine Live on KEXP last year-- and they performed this song! youtu.be (Isn't vocalist Eno Williams great?)

Caribou's seventh studio album, Our Love, was released on this day in 2014. Daniel Victor Snaith (aka Caribou) said "the primary impulse on this record was to make something that was generous in the sense that it was for everybody, not just for me locked in a studio by myself."

Since the summer of 2022, Denni Kindred, a.k.a. Longstocking, has been at the helm of Feral One Records. From its inception, the ethos has been based around the love she feels for her hometown of Seattle while creating space for Pacific Northwest artists to produce music that honours their own personal connection to the region and to the dancefloor. shop.musicis4lovers.com

Performing @ Climate Pledge Arena on October 6 (tonight!) & 7 (tomorrow!).. with The Postal Service! - www.deathcabforcutie.com "Soul Meets Body" was written by frontman Ben Gibbard, and produced by guitarist Chris Walla. Walla summarized the song's message: "It's a declaration of desire over circumstance. It means, 'Here's where I am and here's what I want to be and how do I bridge those two things.' I think it's a beautiful articulation of love, friendships and relationships and everything you do over the course of the day."

New box set alert! Over the summer, The Replacements‘ beloved major label debut, 1985’s Tim, was expanded into a four-CD, one-LP box set called Tim: Let it Bleed Edition. It comes with a remix, previously unreleased recordings (including a few cuts with Alex Chilton), and a live recording from 1986 recorded a week before their shambolic SNL appearance. www.rollingstone.com

New! Spunky! arrives following some major life changes for the Indonesian trio comprising Angeeta Sentana (vocals, guitar), Akbar Rumandung (bass, vocals) and Edo Alventa (guitar, vocals), including a switch in locale from Yogyakarta, the city where they formed the band while still in college. "This is Grrrl Gang’s first release after we graduated and got day jobs that made us have to move to Jakarta, which is undeniably 180 degrees compared to Yogya," says Rumandung. "But moving to Jakarta enabled us to work with Lafa on Spunky! from start to finish." tinyurl.com

The title of this song is said to be inspired by Cretin Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota. The album's origins date back to the summer of 1977, when "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker" was released as a single. That summer was known as the peak of the punk rock genre since many punk bands were offered recording contracts. The album's recording began in August 1977, and the band had a considerably larger budget with Sire allowing them $25,000 and $30,000; much of this money went toward the album's production rather than recording. bit.ly

Soulwax Remix Soulwax Remix. If Marie Davidson is ever looking for a side hustle, she should consider becoming a life coach. As “Work It" shows, the Montreal producer understands there’s no shortcut to success. “You wanna know how I get away with everything?” she politely asks before bluntly divulging the hard truth. “I work, all the f**king time.”

If you're wondering why "Free Yourself" sounds like pop perfection, you can at least partially credit fellow Brit Dua Lipa, who produced the track with Ware and knows a little something about making music for our pandemic nu-disco era n.pr

The album takes its name from a line in the poem Geography by the New York poet Michael Brownstein whose reading of it is also sampled on the album. "Free Yourself" is the first single from the album. www.thechemicalbrothers.com

Performing @ Climate Pledge Arena on October 6 (doors are open now!) & 7 (tomorrow!).. with Death Cab For Cutie! - www.deathcabforcutie.com

Ben had a great year in 2003! Watch them play this one live in Sydney, Australia: youtu.be

A few weeks ago, Ben Gibbard answered a long burning question in the minds of many: "Anybody who’s been asking a second Postal Service record, like really ask yourself, after 20 years, do you really think that there’s gonna something we could make that could even satisfy half of the desire you have in your mind as to what this record would be like? "Twenty years — a lot of technology has changed. A lot of how we make music has changed dramatically since then. It wouldn’t be the same. "I think often, when we think about the music that we love the most and the eras of a certain artist or a band that we love the most, we’re as much thinking about the sound. "It’s not just the songs or how you were driving around in high school listening to it, wishing you could be anywhere other than the town that you’re living in — it’s the sound of it. Whatever we would make now would sound dramatically different than what we made 20 years ago, and I think it would be a disappointment even if we tried." bit.ly

"Birthday" is the song that brought Björk into the popular American consciousness. Released in August 1987 on the Sugarcubes debut album "Life's Too Good," it was the band's first international single. The song is most notable for Bjork's unique vocal gymnastics and for its odd lyrics about a girl who "threads worms on a string," "keeps spiders in her pocket," and "collects fly wings in a jar."

The neighborhood Ben Gibbard speaks about in this song is the Capitol Hill area of Seattle, where he lived for 20 years at one point. Watch the video for "Gold Rush" here: bit.ly

Norman Cook remix