是 Brit pop 吗？是 power pop 吗？为什麽采样别人的歌曲在自己的歌里。上个月，一个美国圣地亚哥的乐团 TV girl 把自己的新 EP 放在网上给歌迷们下载。因为歌曲真的很好听，风格也很独特，这张 EP 马上在独立音乐界中造成了轰动。连 Pitchfork 都把他们的歌 “if you want it” 列为 “这个月 Pitchfork 推荐的好歌”。但是，这个乐团到底是谁啊？没人知道，而到目前为止也没有音乐杂志能够获得他们的访问。
这个乐团的特色是他们在自己的歌曲里采样了其他艺人的歌曲，像 Tood Rundgren 的 “Hello It’s Me” 和 Neil Young 的 “Bird”，而乐队的风格是非常舒服的 power pop 和 indie pop。 如果你喜欢 Jens Lekman 或是英国乐队 Shack， 你一定不能错过他们。

Architect is the debut LP from Glasgows considerable new talent C Duncan, whose previous singles (all present on Architect) enjoyed high praise across press and radio. The album was written and recorded alone in his Glasgow flat on a bedroom studio setup, gradually adding each layer and each instrument one at a time, building up the breadth of the pieces. As a composer, he is classically trained, graduating from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland - another influence clearly visible in his songwriting, in its fully-formed textures and meticulously crafted arrangements. The son of two classical musicians, Christopher was drawn so persuasively to indie and alternative music and playing in school bands as a teen that he added guitar, bass guitar and drums to his existing repertoire of viola and piano, studying all five instruments at the same time. Christopher recently formed a live band to perform his pieces onstage. A full tour schedule, including festivals across the UK and Europe, is available on FatCats pages and his own social networks. The cover art for Architect, a detailed and stylised aerial view of a Glasgow side street, was created by Christopher himself. A skilled and accomplished artist, his work has been exhibited at galleries around Scotland.

Scottish band Django Django have announced Born Under Saturn, the follow-up to their 2012 self-titled debut. The thirteen-track album will arrive May 5 in the U.S. via Ribbon and May 4 via Because internationally; that's the artwork above. Below, check out the tracklisting.

The Go! Team are back with a new album, The Scene Between. Go! Team main man Ian Parton wrote, produced, and performed all of the songs on the new LP, which follows 2011's Rolling Blackouts. It's out March 24 via Memphis Industries.Below, check out the tracklisting.
According to a press release, Parton's writing and recording process for The Scene Between entailed four rules: "Melody would guide the song, samples would be treated as an instrument rather than a basis for the song, the production would vary across the song like flipping the dial on the radio and the singers must all be people he'd never previously heard of."

Ted Joyner and Grant Widmer, friends since high school and Generationals co-captains since 2008, have been in each others’ faces for most of this century.
Natural songwriting partners, they made their first three records at home with the help of mutual friend Daniel Black, and in 2013 they launched straight into their fourth with surprising post-tour energy, but after years of creative brain-melding, the dyad had reached a point of ultra-familiarity and comfort in their work routine that, to them, threatened quicksand. They began to suspect their own productivity of being rut in disguise.
Determined to keep things fresh, they sought out a new producer who might be able shake things up, surprise them, and bring something new to the project.
How about Richard Swift? they said. He’s the best, he's the boss, he’s like the John Keating of cool drum sounds–a perfect fit for a pair of poppy throwback tape-lovers like us.
The Louisiana duo made their way, yellow brick road-style, to Cottage Grove, Oregon, ready to give their tapes over to Swift’s cultishly venerated magic touch, but the collaboration was hardly the scrap-it-all, start-from-scratch, give-up-the-reins-and-let-the-guru-do-his-thing scenario Ted and Grant had expected—hoped for even—when they began their pilgrimage to Swift’s National Freedom studio in February.
Swift deemed the demos album-worthy after all and the original versions were saved at his urging. With a little tightening rather than a vibe transplant, the songs solidified into a cohesive, finished record.
The final version of Alix materialized as perhaps Generationals’ most confident record yet, full of history and as multiphase as Ted and Grant’s friendship.
Built up with layer upon layer of rhythmic lines, computer noises, RZA beats, and poppy vocals that sometimes sound like a Janet Jackson/Prince face-off, Alix is everything T&G like about music: old and new, vinyl and youtube, vocal chord and microkorg, gathered up from everywhere and arranged with great care into a good-smelling, subtly sexy, catchy-or-die mish-mosh of sensibilities and time-warp senselessness, lightly peppered with that signature Swiftian element, but undeniably Generationals in taste.

V is the third studio album by jj. It was announced by Secretly Canadian on May 29, 2014 and will be released on August 19, 2014 in collaboration with Sincerely Yours.

On August 19th, Brooklyn indie-pop outfit Bishop Allen return with Lights Out, their first new album in five years. Due out via Dead Oceans, the 12-track effort follows 2009′s Grrr… and sees founding members Justin Rice and Christian Rudder reunite after pursuing various solo projects. In anticipation, they’ve unveiled the album’s opening track, a peppy and hopeful number entitled “Start Again”.

Canadian quintet Alvvays (pronounced "Always") burst out of the gates with their self-titled 2014 debut, a brief but bright collection of nine songs of nearly perfect, sugar-coated indie pop. The band call on inspiration from the jangly C-86 movement and bands like the Wedding Present or Talulah Gosh, but also lean on the fuzzy, homespun spirit of early American independent bedroom pop and twee while steeping their tunes in a languid dreaminess borrowed from Teenage Fanclub at their most wistful. The album opens with the one-two punch of "Adult Diversion" and "Archie, Marry Me," two single-worthy songs of noisy guitars, gloriously deadpan vocal harmonies, and sticky melodies cemented in the listener's skull by the interplay between guitar and singer Molly Rankin's cascading vocals. The album is full of highlights, from the synthy melancholia of "Party Police" to the Orange Juice-esque interweaving guitar lines of "Atop a Cake." While Alvvays relies on the same reverb-heavy production that an entire generation of beach-obsessed indie pop bands has tended toward, they surpass many of their peers by delivering more inspired songs, often with unexpected shifts or breakthrough moments. This debut surpasses simply being "promising" by delivering pop as beautifully composed as that of contemporaries like Pains of Being Pure at Heart or Veronica Falls, while also tying in sentiments of punk gusto, twee wonderment, and dream pop thoughtfulness without relying strictly on the musical blueprints of any of those genres. Instead, Alvvays find a way to articulate their heart-struck, dream-like songs with deft intention and control.