Kickin’ the Peanuts!

This video is divine!!  Seattle based band Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head, whom we raved about back in the day, have released a debut video for their track Sophisticated Side Ponytail.  The video is really awesome, check it out!

We’re really becoming fans of Rex the Dog! Check out another slick song from his upcoming album, “The Rex the Dog Show” below!  It’s a jam!  “The Rex the Dog Show” is in stores next week.

Maximize- Rex the Dog

Xtina has a greatest hits album, “Keeps Getting Better - A Decade of Hits” in the works for this November, and she’s recorded a few new songs for the album.  One of the new tracks is Keeps Gettin’ Better, a slightly unoriginal track that’s sounding like a Pink track.  It’s a pretty big departure from the bluesy, jazz-era throwback Xtina (we just like calling her that) brought to “Back to Basics”, but it’s a decent song.

Keeps Gettin’ Better- Christina Aguilera

Here’s one last post before I’m off for a couple of days into the Vermont wilderness.  It’s a track that was posted on The Pipettes remix page (how exciting!!): it’s the acapella for a song called The Shoe That Fits.  Take a listen and here how the new Pipettes, Anna and Ani, measure up to our long loved and long lost RiotBecki and Rosay!  It’s only an acapella, so we’re trying not to be too critical…it’s nice!

The Shoe That Fits (acapella)- The Pipettes

This week ten years ago, on August 25, 1998, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” was released. It sold eight million copies and earned Hill five Grammys, including Album of the Year and Best New Artist. The album is, without a doubt, one of our favorite albums of all time, and a modern classic.

Both track by track, and in its entirety, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” is brilliant: the album is both hard and soft, showcasing Hill’s rare ability to seamlessly swing from rapping to singing; the album sounds wonderfully retro, with barbershop crooning on Doo Wop and a smattering of scratchings of an old record on Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and completely modern, infusing soul and rap and hip-hop and reggae; and the album contains both a youthful, magnetic energy and the weight of a wise, mature woman. Emotionally, the album is sublime: it perfectly encapsulates the many beautiful emotional states of love, from love’s first flame (Tell Him), to the in-too-deep (Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, When It Hurts So Bad), to love’s sometimes poignant, sometimes bitter, end (I Used To Love Him, Ex Factor). Ms. Hill can get you through anything. All of this is done so effortlessly, so organically, and so beautifully by Hill and her many collaborators on “Miseducation”. An album we’d recommend a million times over.

Miseducation of Lauryn Hill- Lauryn Hill

Listen to this!! The lovely Jenny Lewis will be back with a new solo album, “Acid Tongue”, September 23rd, and below you can listen to the album’s title track; it’s sounding really really nice! We last heard Jenny Lewis singing with Rilo Kiley on 2007’s “Under the Blacklight”, which we were pretty big fans of, and on her solo debut “Rabbit Fur Coat” which we absolutely love and adore. This time around, though, it seems as though she’s without the lovely Watson Twins! Definitely give Acid Tongue a listen below!

Acid Tongue- Jenny Lewis (stream through NPR)

The Big Guns- Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins

Check out this really great Radio 1 Live cover from Alphabeat of Sam Sparro’s super slick Black and Gold. Watch them perform the song below, and then download both a ripped version of the cover and the original.

Black and Gold (Sam Sparro cover)- Alphabeat

Black and Gold- Sam Sparro

Below is a really cool new video from Kanye West for Good Morning. We’re not quite sure if Good Morning is slated to be a single, we doubt it and we’re not sure the track would carry much influence on radio anyway, but the video is really, really sick. It’s directed by Takashi Murakami, a Japanese artist animator responsible for all of the “Graduation” artwork. The video is set in a futuristic city and features that Kanye-Bear in a race to make it to his graduation; the music video feels like one slick video game.

Also, check out a track that was debuted a few weeks ago from Jay-Z with production by Kanye, who also has a verse on the song. It’s a really cool song, we’ve seen it referred to as both Jockin Jay-Z and Dope Boy Fresh. It’s rumored to be the first single from “The Blueprint 3″. Check it out!

Jockin Jay-Z- Jay-Z

Above: (left) T.I. exercising his second amendment right to bear arms; (right) Rihanna looking damn fine.

This song is amazing!!! It samples O-Zone’s Dragoste a Din Tei, a Romanian europop single that enjoyed a blip of success a few years back when it was every high school students cryptic anthem, easing American-Moldovan relations, however briefly. The track is Livin’ My Life, off T.I.’s album “Paper Trail” dropping September 30th, and it features Rihanna. It’s hot shit!!! God bless Rihanna!

Livin’ My Life- T.I. and Rihanna

Dragostea a Din Tei- O-Zone

We posted Alphabeat’s electro-disco cover of Daft Punk’s ammmmazing Digital Love a while back, but we hadn’t stumbled across Alphabeat’s acoustic version, which has apparently been around for a while, until now. Check it out, it’s really really nice! We think we like it better than the first cover! (credit to Circle Square Triangle for the heads up.)

Digital Love (acoustic Daft Punk cover)- Alphabeat

Digital Love (Daft Punk cover)- Alphabeat, Leon Jean Marie, Frankmusik