We are less than a week away from South By Southwest and I am getting pumped. I’ll be there for the first time with NPR Music producing concerts, including some of my favorites of 2011: James Blake, Smith Westerns, Yuck, Raphael Saadiq, Colin Stetson, tUnE-yArDs, The Joy Formidable, The Antlers, WILD FLAG, Khaira Arby, Bright [...]

Memoryhouse - “Heirloom” from Jamie Harley on Vimeo.
Just came across Memoryhouse today when I read that they have signed with Sub Pop. I can’t say I’ve heard too much about this Toronto pop duo just yet, but they seem to be wading in the same waters as labelmates Beach House and Papercuts. That is, they [...]

Last year’s album from Broken Bells — a collaboration between Danger Mouse (aka Brian Burton) and The Shins’ James Mercer — was among my favorite records of the year. It was such a great mix of psychedelic pop instrumentation, Spaghetti Western soundtracks and electronic experimentation, but done in a way that was still very approachable. [...]

Whoa, how did I manage to miss this one for at least a few years? Awhile back you might recall that Radiohead released “stems” for their song “Reckoner” from In Rainbows. These stems basically are individual tracks from the song, not quite the raw multi-track recordings, but rather they were grouped into different pieces like [...]

One of the things that everyone seemed to forget when discussing Peter Bjorn And John’s breakout album Writer’s Block was it’s conciseness. When you boiled down the glockenspiels and whistling that made “Young Folks” such a monstrous, ubiquitous hit, the songs on that record were lean, simple and melodically memorable. The song structures were just [...]

What is it about split screen in film that, when expertly employed, makes it so engaging and interesting? Some of my favorite films from the 1960’s use it really well — the original Thomas Crown Affair with Steve McQueen and Woodstock come to mind right off the bat, but I’m sure I could find 20 [...]