CoachellAltDelight brings attention to special artists that will be featured in Indio come April.
Some we love. Some we just discovered. All good stuff.
Click here for more from this series.
16 (23) Days

Santa Barbara’s Gardens & Villa have their own brand of cool. Indie synth that feels like body surfing to another universe, their psychedelia is the kind of stuff you want to get lost in all summer. Their debut album came out last year, while they toured with breakout sensations Foster the People. These guys are going to be big, too. They’ve got their own thing going on and it would make for a really wacky/trippy live performance. Keep an eye out for them on Sunday if you wanna give your ears/dancing shoes a rest from all the electronic acts that dominate that day. They’re a guaranteed good time.

Gardens & Villa – Black Hills
Gardens & Villa – Neon Dove
Gardens & Villa – Orange Blossom
Gardens & Villa – Spacetime

Fanfarlo’s follow-up to their highly acclaimed 2009 debut, Reservoir, is an experimental stride forward, clear past the sophomoric slump that so many bands face. Naturally, Rooms Filled With Light maintains their original dreamy, raw-voiced orchestral pop, but something about it is bigger. It’s more expansive, like they opened up the doors and let their potentials run around in the sun a bit. It manages to be both foreboding and charming, an odd but delightful mixture. It’s full of pent-up energy and urgency. The marriage of synth and orchestra yanks their sound from the dusty crevices of the past and makes it far more modern than their previous album. It’s a very well-composed album–harmonious and optimistic. It lives up to its title. I love its underlying message. Good stuff.

Tracklist

1. Replicate
2. Deconstruction
3. Lenslife
4. Shiny Things
5. Tunguska
6. Everything Turns
7. Tightropes
8. Feathers
9. Bones
10. Dig
11. A Flood
12. Everything Resolves

Free Candy

Harold T. Wilkins or How to Wait For a Very Long Time

The other day I randomly found myself wondering what the hell happened to electronic-punk outfit Does It Offend You, Yeah? who, as far as I knew, hadn’t released anything since their 2008 debut. They fell off the map for a bit and I let myself forget about them. Turns out, they released a followup last year, and I’m glad I stumbled across it. If words could describe this album it would be: “!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Simply put, the album is organized chaos, crammed into 11 hard-hitting, dizzyingly catchy indie-electro tracks. It successfully blends indie-rock with dance-pop-noise and so much more. Though they manage to hold onto their original charm, the three years off clearly did them some good. It’s massively entertaining. Enjoy.

Tracklist

1. We Are the Dead
2. John Hurt
3. Pull Out My Insides
4. Yeah!
5. The Monkeys Are Coming
6. Wrong Time Wrong Planet
7. Wrestler
8. Wondering
9. The Knife
10. Broken Arms
11. Survival of the Thickest

Free Candy

Dawn Of the Dead
Dawn Of the Dead (Hadouken! Remix)

Allow me to get ridiculously cheesy on you: if an echo was something physical that could fit in your pocket and be left somewhere, then picked up and churned out into a song, that song would be Beach House’s newest release “Myth.” It’s a floating dreamscape, rolling against the tides of some subconscious feeling. I want to build a canoe inside this song. Corniness aside, it’s really beautiful. I’m hooked.

Berkely’s Dan Casey (aka Yalls) makes synth-heavy, space-looped, psychadellic-ish weirdness. His music is the kinda stuff that is almost too strange at first, but still manages to hook you and stay wrapped around your brain for hours on end until it becomes an addiction. It’s good cause there’s nothing quite like it so you really just don’t know what to think. Confusing can be good. Here’s your proof:

Majical Cloudz (Yalls Remix) by Francisco
How Much We Have Lost
Germs

Power-pop quartet YAWN is a band to look out for, joining the league of electronic experimental acts such as Yeasayer, Animal Collective and Of Montreal. One tribal layer after the other, they are a sonic trip to outer-space, delving in and out of other dimensions. Their debut album Open Season is 11 solid tracks of that weird musical voodoo that entrances you and gets stuck in your head for hours on end. The album has a firm grasp on all things weird but utterly enjoyable. Beyond their experimental appeal, they’re ridiculously talented live performers. I had the pleasure of seeing them a few days ago in San Diego, opening for the Kooks and it was an awesomely ethereal experience. Their trippy voice loops and multidimensional tribal effect is even better live. They bring a wonderful energy to the stage and it was fun to watch the audience get sucked into their universe. Overall, they’re cool dudes making cool music. You’ll be seeing more of these guys around. Spread the love.

Toys
Kind of Guy
Gasoline
David
YumYum

UK essentials Arctic Monkeys are releasing a new single “R U Mine?” tomorrow, a b-side off their 2011 release “Suck It and See.” Arctics are constantly evolving, consistently progressing. I find if very difficult to argue with anything they put out. This song in particular is just incredible. It has a darker edge than the stuff they released on the album but a similar mystique, with brilliantly smoky riffs and thundering drums. An instant obsession. I’ve had it on repeat. They made a fun little video to go with it.

R U Mine?