There are plenty of choices of new tracks out this week from freshly released new EPs and albums by bands and artists like The Magnetic Fields, Andrew Birds, Said The Whale, White Rabbits, and many others (see Part One of this week’s Best New Releases), as well as from punk bands like Ceremony, Nu Sensae, The Men, plus others such as Crushed Stars, Nite Jewel, and many others (see Part Two for those tracks).
This post – DIY Releases Out This Week – is a new series (in conjunction with Best DIY Releases of the Month), that features only new tracks from albums out this week by DIY and unsigned artists.
First up, is an artist we’ve previously featured, Norman, Oklahoma (hometown of The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne) one-man band, Two Suns. Last year, Two Suns, or Jake Davidson, released two EPs, which had some cool songs on them. Now, he is back with his debut album, Dream Familiar. While predominantly a bass guitarist, Davidson also performs all the instruments and commonly mixes in samples with his genre-bending blend of shoegaze, psychedelic pop folk (yeah, that is a mouthful). The name Two Suns stems from the fact that Davidson has two young sons. Let everyone know what you think of Two Suns – it’ll be great to hear more feedback.
“Eyes to Hope” – Two Suns from Dream Familiar
“Ran Wild” – Two Suns from Dream Familiar
Tricky Dope, Teleskopes, Soy La Vid, Hey Enemy
Tricky Dope is an unsigned indie band from Linköping, Sweden who started performing together only in December 2011. Not much else is known about this band, but this is their first official single, “Seven Whales.” View the Tricky Dope Facebook page.
“Seven Whales” – Tricky Dope from Seven Whales
Los Angeles DIY space rock/noise duo Teleskopes shared a single, “Release Your Mind,” from the just released album, For The Living.
Soy La Vid is the moniker of indie rock/folk/electronic aritst Mark Abdon from Indianapolis, Indiana. Interestingly, each track on his album, Lost in Translation, is based on a piece of art housed in the Art Institute of Chicago. Next, check out the new song from the album dropped this week by indie band Hey Enemy and Young Mammals.
“Release Your Mind” – Teleskopes from For The Living
“Fisherman’s Cottage (The Hermit)” – Soy La Vid from Lost in Translation
“Happy Sanchez” – Hey Enemy from The Wrong Songs to Right Wrongs
Flashback Tracks: Yarn Owl, One in a Googoplex, Wave Array, and This Mad Desire
Flashback Tracks are songs that we received via our submission process, but never had time or room to feature them for the date they were released. As with all Flashback Track segments, all the songs in this mini-playlist within a playlist, were released during March of 2011.
The featured songs are those which passed the first ‘listen’ test, but that in the end, we’re more interested to see what others think about them. Due to time constraints, we’re not doing any write-ups about the artists who recorded these songs – however, if we see that there is a lot of interest for a particular artist, we’ll think about featuring them in a follow-up post, especially if they have new music (2012) to post.
The band that stands out the most from the Flashback Tracks is Pullman, Washington’s Yarn Owl, who have previously opened for bands like Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Local Natives, The Most Serene Republic, The Helio Sequence, Grand Archives and many others.
Last March, the still unsigned band released their debut album, Montaña Y Caballo. Here’s the lead track from the album, “Seashell Wind Chime.” We’re actually keeping our eye on this band because we think they have a great sound that would probably catch on if more people heard them. Since their debut, we don’t see any newer releases, and cannot understand why this band has broken out. Listen to more tracks on the Yarn Owl bandcamp page to see what we mean. We’ve also include a track from their terrific 2010 EP (free via their bandcamp page) with the hopes that more indie rock listeners will latch on to Yarn Owl. The band have been previously featured on popular indie sites like Gorilla vs. Bear and Weekly Tape Deck, among others.
“Lily” – One in a Googoplex from Lily – March 8th, 2011
“Arm Yourself” – Wave Array from Golden Girl – March 10th, 2011
“This Mad Desire” – This Mad Desire from Valhalla – March 12, 2011