Taken By Trees will tour the United States with El Perro Del Mar during the latter half of February and early March (unfortunately, nary one date south of Philadelphia). As a prelude to this Swedish invasion, consider this footage from Taken By Trees’ performance in support of her 2007 release, Open Field, at NYC’s Other Music:

For more performances featuring El Perro Del Mar and/or Lykke Li, watch their Takeaway Show here (via GvsB).

Anyhow, those of you anxiously awaiting a Best Coast album need wait but a little longer. Apparently, Bethany and Bob are in the studio recording a full-length that will be out this summer (?), and they even have a single for “Something in the Way” out on Dean Spunt’s PPM records this February. That and a recent profile on ABC’s Amplified with Dan Harris? Blowin’ up.

Best Coast is currently on a brief West Coast tour with Vivian Girls. You can follow the progress of their forthcoming album on Bethany’s blog. Download “Up All Night” from their new 7″ split with Jeans Wilder here (via Gorillavsbear). Watch Nylon TV’s “Band Crush” feature below:

From this day forward, all posts will now begin with “download new Animal Collective album here for free” and “chillwave.” It is what it is. I am only the messenger. I am as saddened by the monotony of the mainstream blog world as you.

NYC’s Twin Sister are currently giving away their Vampires with Dreaming Kids EP via their website. What to say about these songs? Imagine four tunes that sound similar and yet somehow nothing alike, and you’ll be a little closer to the sound of Twin Sister. Rich harmonies, occasional noise, a female vocalist who sounds like Zooey Deschanel doing her best Stephen Malkmus. And that’s just the first two songs. Thanks to Chocolate Bobka for the heads up.

And while you’re checking our Chocolate Bobka, be sure to download (also for free) the excellent Underwater Peoples Winter Review. As good as the label’s stellar 2009 Summertime Showcase (maybe just colder?) which you still buy here for all of $4 (plus shipping/handling).

And if you haven’t heard Mountain Man’s hypnotic, sepia-toned, self-titled debut, you can stream the tracks here (you can also purchase the record at the very same site by naming your own price – however, for you frugalistas out there, you have to pay at least $5). Can you actually believe this stuff was recorded by three women in 2009? What if I told you the band is from Bennington, Vermont? Seems a little more plausible doesn’t it? Watch a video of the band below. People just don’t sing like this anymore:

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner: Mountain Man [Part 2 of 14] from Ray Concepcioñ on Vimeo.

So, I’m a little late on this one. What can I say. The pecking order around these parts is as follows: 1) Sweden 2) Beach House 3) Everyone else. If you’re not from Sweden and/or a member of Beach House, it just might take me a month (or three) to notice your record.

Montreal-based Michael Silver, aka CFCF, has a brand new album, Continent, out on Paper Bag records. Perhaps best known for his work as a remixer (Justice, Crystal Castles, HEALTH, Cassie), CFCF’s latest effort is chock full of the kinds of soft, cinematic, more than a little 70s-ish sounds that have recently, and somewhat inexplicably, become fashionable (see Quiet Village, Italians Do It Better)

Man, am I a sucker for this stuff. Mirrorball nothing. This is music for the headphone set. It’s all about the details. Nevertheless, the recent disco renaissance does make one wonder: Did the 70s really sound like this? Probably not, but if the “me decade” sounded even remotely like Continent, it must have been a pretty okay time (Vietnam war, Nixon, Watergate, gas shortages, cocaine and stagflation excepting).

Watch the video for album track “You Hear Colours” below. Check out the dancefloor-leaning, Fleetwood Mac cover, “Big Love” here (via The Fader). Download album cut “Monolith” here (via The Fader). Maybe I should have just asked The Fader to write this post?:

Just when you thought I’d tired of the synthesizer, along comes this post. What can I say. It takes a village. Or something like that.

Any act described by at least one blog as a fusion of Crystal Castles and The Smiths is certain to get my attention. I’m not sure if Class Actress are exactly that (could any band be?), but they do have some excellent songs.

Class Actress are Elizabeth Harper, Scott Rosenthal and Mark Richardson, and they have a brand new EP, Journal of Ardency, out February 9th via Chris Taylor’s (of Grizzly Bear fame) Terrible Records.

Download EP tracks “Careful What You Say” and “Journal of Ardency” here. Read the group’s Pitchfork “Rising” interview here. Hear the rest of the EP at the group’s myspace page, including the shimmering “Broken Adolescent Heart” and “Let Me Take You Out.” Like the record Stars has been trying to make for the past three years.

And speaking of female-fronted synth-pop groups, Parallels’ debut record comes out next month. Who? What? Well, this Toronto-based trio (Holly Dodson, Joey Kehoe and ex-Crystal Castle, Cameron Findlay) have been the object of considerable interweb buzz for some time now. Their song “Find the Fire” was recently featured on Kitsune Maison Compilation 8 (released in November), and the group seems poised for something of a breakthrough (whatever that might mean these days). Break out your acid-washed jeans. It’s time to party like it’s 1989.

Check out a live performance of their ever stellar “Reservoir” below:

And what’s a blog about retro-leaning, female-fronted groups without an Italians Do It Better shout out? I am an absolute sucker for anything this label does. Breaking my heart slowly since 2007. Watch the official video for Chromatics’ “In The City” below. And if a cryptic entry on their myspace page is to be believed, they’re currently working on new material. If you don’t own IDIB’s After Dark compilation, please do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. Now.

Needless to say, it was a welcome, sun-dappled respite from the thirty-two inches of snow encircling my apartment. And that cover’s not frontin’. It’s that sunny. Think of it as music by which to thaw out, just in time for the coldest winter in, well, forever.

I must admit, I’m heartened by this recent strain of vocal-oriented music. Between Dinosaur Feathers, Local Natives and Edward Sharpe (just to name a few), singing is back and in a big way. Call it the new black. Who needs a laptop? Voices. The original alternative?

Download the EP here (via the band’s website). Dinosaur Feathers’ full-length, Fantasy Memorial, is out March 2nd. Download album track “Vendela Vida” here (via Pop Tarts Suck Toasted).

And before there was Hospice, there was Peter Silberman’s New York Hospitals EP. It includes two covers and a decidedly different reading of Hospice standout, “Sylvia.” Download all three tracks here (via the Antlers’ blog). Highly recommended.

The Magnetic Fields cover (“Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing”) features vocals from another onemaninasmallroom fave, Sharon Van Etten. Download Sharon’s cover of Morrissey’s ‘The More You Ignore Me (The Closer I Get)” here (via Chocolate Bobka). Watch the official video for “For You” from Sharon’s excellent Because I Was in Love below. Sharon is currently on tour with North Carolina’s own, Bowerbirds. Be sure to check our Sharon’s myspace page for additional songs.

Allow me to preface this post by saying that, in my eyes, The Knife can do no wrong. However, if you kept up with my old blog, such a statement is hardly revelatory. “Heartbeats” is one of my favorite songs of all time, and I spend large portions of my work day listening to Silent Shout and Fever Ray (Knife principal, Karin Dreijer-Andersson’s witchy solo debut). I wonder how my co-workers might feel about that last statement?

Anyhow, lack of objectivity aside, The Knife’s “Colouring of Pigeons” is the greatest eleven minute song I’ve ever heard. I’m not sure what it’s about. I’m not even sure what’s being said. But if this is what the rest of The Knife’s forthcoming (out digitally 2/2 (physically 3/9) via Mute) Tomorrow, In A Year sounds like, it will be the first (and most likely only) opera I’ll ever own.

Listen/Download “Colouring of Pigeons” here (via Stereogum). Watch a performance clip from the opera below. Read more about Tomorrow, In A Year here. Strange yet infinitely fascinating. Just when you thought those crazy Dreijer kids couldn’t get any weirder, spookier, mystifying. They just seem to have a way of pushing you to listen to music you never even thought you would enjoy.

Some might consider Miike Snow, the group’s debut, also featuring Andrew Wyatt of Fires of Rome, a disappointment. Sure, upon first listen, it doesn’t exactly sound like a “great” record or even the kind of release you would expect from such an accomplished pair of producers. However, the more time you spend with Miike Snow’s debut, the more catchy and interesting it becomes.

I am consistently impressed/depressed by the fact that I rarely listen to an album more than a handful of times. That is unless it’s 1) a Swedish artist or 2) a Beach House record, but I digress. These days it seems we all spend less and less time actually listening to records repeatedly. There’s just so much music and it’s all increasingly easy to hear. Almost every day there’s another review, another blog, another article raving about the latest and greatest release. Given this collective attention deficit, albums that require multiple spins really suffer. Miike Snow is such an album, and that’s more than a little surprising given the fact that these guys write Top 40 pop songs for a living.

Other than “Animal” (which is instantly infectious), almost all of the songs reveal themselves slowly. In fact, I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed this album until I was standing on a people mover in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport and listening to the album for about the tenth time. This may not be the record most people expected Bloodshy & Avant to make, but it is one of the best pop records of 2009. Like pop music from a very distant (and most likely cold) future.

Download “Animal” here (via Pop Tarts Suck Toasted). Download “Burial” here (via Golden Bloggen). Download “Cult Logic” here (via I Hope Your Ears Bleed). Download “Sylvia” here (via Golden Bloggen). Download “A Horse is Not a Home” here (via Friday Mixtape).

Watch the video for “Sylvia” below: