New Music!

Today must be an important day, I guess. A bunch of cool new music videos and songs are dropping this morning. I've gathered a few of them here, check it out.

First is Florence + The Machine's original contribution to The Great Gatsby's soundtrack, "Over The Love." It's great. Cinematic and bold as Florence always is, but refreshingly delicate and pensive. It's a beautiful track, and an incredible addition to the action-packed soundtrack. Let's hope the film lives up to it's music! Listen to Flo's song below, and look at the tracklist here via GQ.com.

Second, a new album that is on its way to shelves next week. LA alt-rockers The Neighbourhood are dropping their debut album I Love You. on Columbia (April 23), and it's incredible. Their EP I'm Sorry…  has been turning heads for a few months, and this band is on the verge of becoming the next big thing. The remarkable part is that they are doing it without buying into the system of "manufactured music" that produces fad after fad. This band has guts, originality, and purpose. The album is very good. Get into it here, and buy it next week.

Up next, two new music videos, both for songs released on albums last year. The first is Sara Watkins's "You and Me," which appears on her sophomore album Sun Midnight Sun (Nonesuch). The song is great, and it seems to hit much closer to home than her first solo album (self-titled, 2009), which took some liberties in exploring the edges of country and folk music. That album was certainly a success, but I think that this one takes the lessons learned during all that adventuring and brings them back to Nashville. I'll be spending some time with this album after listening to "You and Me." Check out the beautiful video, directed by Russ Kendall:

The second video is for "Can't Hold Us" by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, which appears on their debut full-length album The Heist (Independent, 2012). Forgetting about "Thrift Shop" for a minute, this is the song to bring the house down. "Can't Hold Us" is enormous, and it's one of my favorites from the dynamic duo. The video is everything you expect it to be: loud, outrageous, overblown, and absolutely awesome. The alternate intro/outro to the track is also really incredible. It's hard to put words to this, so just watch it knowing that whatever your opinion of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis happens to be, this video will probably uphold it:

A note on the "Can't Hold Us" video: it is officially posted to Ryan Lewis's YouTube channel, and if you visit the video page and click "Show More" below the video, you'll find a really worthwhile message from Ryan about how this video was made, who deserves credit, and why it's hard to designate specific roles for people involved in this kind of project. It's a nice reminder that this, like  more or less everything, is a work created by devoted individuals, and can't be reduced to anything less.

That's it for now. Yesterday was US release day for Mosquito by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Terror by The Flaming Lips, and Desperate Ground by The Thermals. Stay tuned for posts on some/all of those albums in the coming days and weeks. Keep rocking.