Every week, Hype Monitor wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet.

The Band: Los Campesinos
Th Buzz: Wacky Wales collective spit out songs as bright and varied as day-glo paint.
Listen If: You have a serious sugar deficiency, and need songs with big hooks and indelible melodies
Key Track: The synthy rush of "We Are Beautiful We Are Doomed," where cascading keys do battle with sawing strings and big bursts of guitar

The Band: Benoit Pioulard
The Buzz: Oregon folkie makes music that's as dark and mysterious as curls of smoke.
Listen if: You have a thing for men with soft voices, or need music to drift to sleep by.
Key Track: "Ragged Tint," where Pioulard's cotton ball voice bounces atop tumbleweed guitars.

The Band: The Welcome Wagon
The Buzz: Kinfolk of Sufjan Stevens continue his quest to make banjos.
sexy, writing Appalachian gospel songs that are both spare and stirring.
Listen If: You haven't been to church in a few years, and want to make amends with a Sunday morning hoedown.
Key Track: The uber-Christian "But For You Who Fear My Name," where a gang chorus, blurting brass and twinkles of guitar make for a modern-day hymn.

Who: Bon Iver, the nom de plume of Justin Vernon, who isolated himself in a cabin during a harsh Wisconsin winter and emerged with 2008's most buzzed-about folk album, For Emma, Forever Ago, a set of nine songs adored by music critics and Grey's Anatomy fans alike.

Sounds Like: Picture Nick Drake if the Pink Moon singer pulled a Henry David Thoreau and ensconced himself in the woods. For Emma is an icy moonscape of an album, with Vernon layering vocal track over vocal track, harmonizing his eerie falsetto with itself along to chopped and spliced acoustic guitar on songs like "Flume" and "Creature Fear."

Vital Stats:

(more...)

Photo:Fredrik Wennerlund

Swedish psych-rockers the Soundtrack of Our Lives have somehow churned out a 24-track double-LP in just two weeks. The disc, Communion, is due March 3rd (it'll be out digitally January 6th on all major sevices at Yeproc.com) and is a bit of a concept album — there's a tune for every hour of the day. That makes "Flipside" (disc two, track three - hear it below) just right for 3 p.m.

"Flipside"

A message from the pint-size British MC upon the release of her glitchy new single:

Hey Hey! Just to let you know i'm alive! Today you can hear the first track "I Got You Dancing" from my new album. I'm giving it away for free at my website and myspace, call it an early Christmas gift! I just finished writing the new album in London, it's going to release on April 7th 2009. The album is the next chapter, it's a massive leap forward for mankind!!! Love, Sov

• "I Got You Dancing"
[right click and select "save as"]

Every week, Hype Monitor wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet.

The Band: The Hours
The Buzz: Grand, emotive, pleading pop music from — you guessed it — Britain.
Listen If: You'd like Coldplay if only they were a bit smaller in scale.
Key Track: "The Lights," which shifts from meditative piano to gleaming filigrees of guitar in the space of seven glorious minutes.

The Band: Zomby
The Buzz: London producer revisits the glory days of rave with surprisingly energizing results.
Listen If: You catch yourself sighing wistfully when you spot a baby sucking on a pacifier.
Key Track: "Daft Punk Rave," which cuts up DP's "Technologic" and scatters it across blinking-light keyboards.

The Band: Land Of Talk
The Buzz: Montreal band proves there are bands up north that don't have 900 members or a penchant for high drama.
Listen If: All you need is a cluster of nervous guitar chords and a smartass female vocal to make your afternoon.
Key Track: "Some Are Lakes," where ragged vocals and gritty guitar reveal the hidden intersection between indie and Americana.

The Hold Steady keyboardist Franz Nicolay is best known for his classic boogie piano lines, jubilant backing vocals and sharply curving mustache, but his new solo album Major General looks to catapult him to star status. Click below for an exclusive download of the excellent "World/Inferno Vs The End of Evening."

• "World/Inferno Vs the End of Evening"
[right click and select "save as"]

Who: North Carolina's Annuals, a sextet of indie rockers that are getting melodic on their second album, Such Fun, which amazingly features cover art by PBS painter Bob Ross.

Sounds Like: The Tar Heel State's version of the Arcade Fire, with singer Aaron Baker leading a small army of multi-instrumentalists. "We focused more on the song," Baker said of this album compared to the band's debut, the critically-acclaimed Be He Me. "We'll listen to parts of the songs for awhile, then each member of the band will come together and find what fits well with the song. We just tried to keep in more balanced on this record." The result is a less experimental but no less energetic and entertaining sophomore disc.

Vital Stats:

(more...)

Who: The Knux, a pair of brothers from New Orleans' Ninth Ward who show their band geek chops on their debut Remind Me in Three Days....

Sounds Like: With influences as far ranging as Led Zeppelin and the Cash Money crew, the Knux mix experimental Native Tongues rap with live instruments and the sample savviness of Portishead to form supercatchy tunes with densely referential lyrics. "I can't listen to new hip-hop — it's too fucking clean," Alvin "Rah Almillio" Lindsey says. "We want to be extra-grimy, extra-raw. That's why we compare ourselves to the Strokes."

Vital Stats:

(more...)

Tomorrow Goldfrapp are rereleasing Seventh Tree as a special edition DVD featuring live tracks, videos and concert footage. For an early taste of some of the band's dreamy, atmospheric pop, grab an early (and free) download of "Clowns." If it wasn't for the applause at the end, you'd never know this orchestral tune wasn't perfected in the studio.

"Clowns"
[right click and select "save as"]

For more Goldfrapp, check out the band chatting about the album here. As Alison Goldfrapp told us of the record's name, "I had a dream about a very large tree. There was beautiful sunshine, and the tree was waving in the wind and said it should be called it the 'Seventh Tree.' And you can't argue with a dream."

Every week, Hype Monitor wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet.

The Band: Kooley High
The Buzz: Stunning North Carolina hip-hop group makes grand, thumping tracks from sliced-up soul and shards of R&B. It's like every song should be released on 45.
Listen If: You don't care how cold it is outside — to you, it's always summertime. And 1993.
Key Track: "Too Late," the kind of sizzling all-crew scorcher that would have done Arrested Development proud.

The Band: Iran
The Buzz: TV on the Radio's Kyp Malone flexes his pure pop impulses, writing songs with grand, gliding melodies and strange, sinuous choruses.
Listen If: You wish Bowie sounded a bit more like the bands he palled around with.
Key Track: "Airport '79," Iran's "Five Years" rewrite that scrapes up bright acoustic strumming with scabrous swipes of synth.

The Band: Fire on Fire
The Buzz: Maine collective plays sprawling, haunted Appalachian folk, stacking grainy layers of acoustic guitars, mandolins and harmonium for a new spin on old-timey death ballads.
Listen If: Your beard is bigger than most babies, or you have an abiding fascination in ghost stories of the old American West.
Key Track: "Heavy D," which has nothing to do with '80s hip-hop and everything to do with the great existential weight.