Fruit Bats have been making their brand of folky indie pop for a few years now, and are back for their third album. Spelled in Bones depends so heavily on acoustic guitars and saccharine vocal harmonies that it’s rather like acoustic power pop in some places. The songs are all appealing sing-alongs that […]

Long ago, in the early 90s, Blood of Abraham, at the behest of Eazy-E, signed to Ruthless Records, home to N.W.A.. They recorded an album, Future Profits, which debuted in 1993 and included the track “Niggaz and Jewz (Some Say Kikes).” The track featured Eazy-E, a sampled Klansman, and the recorded debut of […]

It’s been a few years since Michael Penn’s last album (Aside: did you know Michael is the brother of Chris and Sean Penn?). He released MP4: Days Since a Lost Time Accident in 2000, continuing in his tradition of taking too long in between records. He’s always been a pretty solid pop songwriter, […]

Apsci stands for “applied science,” and is pronounced “app-sigh.” The group consists of husband-wife duo Ra Lamotta and Dana Diaz-Tutaan and DJ Big Wiz. Ra and Dana take care of all the vocals and production, while Big Wiz provides cuts on most tracks. Ra (who looks uncannily like Billy Corgan) is a […]

This disc compiles 10 tracks from Cursive’s early 7-inch singles, and adds two previously unreleased cuts. Both unreleased tracks are from 1996, meaning they weren’t recorded specifically for the compilation (unlike the newly recorded tracks on the latest Fountains of Wayne comp). As indicated by the subtitle, these tracks are from a number of […]

The Happy Bullets are a psych-pop outfit from Oak Cliff, TX, who names their band after the frequent drive-by shootings in their neighborhood. The music on The Vice and Virtue Ministry is an appealing mix of modern indie pop (Magnetic Fields, Apples in Stereo) and 60s psych rock (Zombies, Kinks). It’s all very […]