We know that we’ve prepared you thoroughly for Halloween weekend with costume ideas, mixtapes, and graveyard tours. But what about the dull slog that is the beginning of November? Three weeks and change until Thanksgiving seems like an eternity when you’re picking candy corn our of your teeth and glitter out of your hair. Might we suggest our mixtape this week to warm your bones and soothe you out of your sugar coma? Right click + save as to download the individual tracks, or scroll down to the end to get the whole shebang at once.
Philly duo Chiddy Bang blur the lines between hip-hop and indie rock, sampling MGMT and Sufjan Stevens while working with Pharrell, Q-Tip, and Darwin Deez.
The pair’s debut album is set to hit shelves next year, preceded by this week’s release of the appropriately titled The Preview EP. At eight tracks, it’s almost a full album in itself, and paired with the group’s much buzzed-about Swelly Express mixtape, offers plenty of bangers to hold fans off until the album appears.
Typography geek Greg Solenström recently paired black and white photos of Brooklyn with Akzidenz Grotesk font and Jay-Z and Lil Wayne’s “Hello Brooklyn 2.0″ for a fan made tribute that we think could work as an official video. Check it out after the jump, plus nine more of our favorite fan videos for artists like Radiohead, MGMT, and Grizzly Bear.
1. Our premature nomination for song of the summer: Auto Tuned Wolves. [via BuzzFeed]
2. Speaking of, what do you make of this new “tweens pretending to be wolves” trend? Creeptastic. [via HRO]
3. It’s a Talking Heads indie rock cover showdown between MGMT, Arcade Fire, and Kyp Malone. [via 24Bit]
4. A memo to bros traveling to Australia: you now have to declare your porn when you go through customs. [via AP]
5. Watch the entire series of Lost acted out by cats in just one minute. [via Vulture]
6. Do they do naked Fridays at your office? [via Daily Intel]
7. Killer asparagus. It’s real, and it’s deadly. [via Gawker]
8. Fifty vintage lunchboxes that we would have lusted over in elementary school. [via notcot]
9. Things we wish were real: The Baby-sitters Club & Zombies. [via The Daily What]
10. Is this the summer music festival lineup to end all summer music festival lineups? [via]
To celebrate our recent streak of wonderful weather, here’s a weekly mixtape fit for a glorious spring day. There are both up and coming wunderkinds (Avi Buffalo, Twin Sister) and established musical geniuses (Wolf Parade, Ratatat) at work on this diverse set of songs — but what they all have in common is their seasonal appeal. See for yourself after the jump, where you can download the entire mix or check out each of the ten tracks individually.
1. While you were sleeping, MGMT dropped their trippy new video for “Flash Delirium,” complete with an Austin Powers puppet. [via TwentyFourBit]
2. When he returns to New York for his upcoming show at Deitch Projects, a reformed Shepard Fairey plans to ask before he pastes. [via ArtsBeat]
3. Meanwhile, a Dennis Hopper survey is on the short list of inaugural shows to be presented under new director Jeffrey Deitch at LA’s MOCA. [via Lindsay Pollock]
4. FOX is launching a new reality dating show, My Parents Are Gonna Love You, that sounds something like The Bachelor meets Punk’d — but the joke is on the poor parents. [via THR]
5. June Havoc, Gypsy Rose Lee‘s sister and the real life inspiration for Gypsy the musical’s “Baby June” character, has died at 97. [via WaPo]
1. Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, partners in the Japanese architectural firm SANAA, have won the 2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize. Among their projects in the U.S. are New York’s New Museum and a glass pavilion for the Toledo Museum of Art. [via NYT]
2. It’s officially a hit: Broadway’s Next to Normal, which took home three Tony awards last year, has earned back its $4 million in invested capital. [via NYT]
3. Blossom (aka Mayim Bialik) has landed a role on The Big Bang Theory as a potential love interest for Sheldon. [via EW]
4. Mark your calendars: MGMT will be the musical guest on Saturday Night Live‘s April 24th episode. [via TwentyFourBit]
5. Is it “groupthink” to tell you that you must watch Erykah Badu strip in her new music video, “Window Seat”? [via Vulture]
This week’s mix features a remix (that “Home” song), reworkings (Metric, Jónsi of Sigur Rós), remixables (Wye Oak, Flight Facilities), and songs so damn catchy they already sound remixed (The Black Keys, Penguin Prison, New Young Pony Club). So if you’re like us, constantly starving for new tunes, digest the next ten piecemeal or all in one sitting after the jump.
Now that they’ve subjected the world to some eye-blinding cover art, put out a cheesy promotional infomercial, and preemptively apologized for the song “Flash Delirium,” all that’s left for MGMT’s newest album Congratulations is the actual music (which is now streaming here). Amidst the oblique psychedelic meandering of their latest, the guys in MGMT felt compelled to saddle a pair of songs with some extra musical baggage: “Brian Eno” and “Song for Dan Treacy.”
In honor of MGMT bestowing their blessing on these two artists, we’ve compiled a list of songs about musicians/bands (the recent death of Alex Chilton is another unfortunate reason to examine this niche). After the jump, check out our choices, accompanied by some defining lyrics and ranging from self-referential jokiness to teary-eyed homages to a seriously pissed off Jay-Z. As always, let us know which songs we’ve left off.
