In 2001 Stars released Nightsongs, a sleek soundtrack for after-hours spent under bedside lamps instead of city lights. Despite lyrics about breakups, it sounded a little like Portishead for people who haven't had sex yet. Eleven years later, the Montreal quintet is still singing about young lovers, but their gimlet eyes have narrowed. On "The Theory of Relativity," the first single from their sixth studio album The North (out now on ATO), ... Read More

Cat Power (aka Chan Marshall) has always been something of a heartbreaker, whether she’s trying her hand at country-tinged, whiskey-drenched blues or putting a haunting spin on old classics. For her ninth full-length Sun (out today on Matador), Marshall has gone electro—imagine Moon Pix’s “Cross Bones Style” with a bigger budget and without the minimalism. A thumping synth drives “Real Life,” a ... Read More

With a history of live shows that verge on performance art and ceremony, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the upcoming album from Hare Krishna commune-raised sisters of Prince Rama is more than just your regular release. Aware that it’s 2012 and the end is near, the Brooklyn-based duo has appropriately created a faux-cover album of ten fabricated popular bands that died during the apocalypse. Top Ten Hits of the End of ... Read More

I’ve long suspected that Jamie Stewart, the brains and bleeding heart of Xiu Xiu, could be the third member of Mates of State, exiled from their land of hetero jangle-pop to a rehab center for self-harm. In a similar vein as 2010’s Dear God, I Hate Myself, the band’s new album Always (out now on Polyvinyl) finds Xiu Xiu still wandering the freeways, subsisting on fistfuls of wild kumquats and prescription painkillers. ... Read More

Splendor Squalor (out now on Kanine), the second full-length from Brooklyn-based Xray Eyeballs, finds the quartet in a much poppier place than they were on their first effort, Not Nothing. The raw, energetic sound backing O.J. San Felipe’s husky vocals is still present, along with the perfect blend of nostalgia for sounds of the past with a vision decidedly focused on the future. But if Not Nothing felt like a Velvet ... Read More