It's five days until Christmas so we're going to get you in the mood. A few new indie Christmas tracks were released this year, including this one by Nat Jay.
I LOVE her song "Green Trees and Red Hearts", and this one, "Christmas In Paradise" has you picturing spending the holiday somewhere nice and tropical.
Think warm thoughts!
This was a late entry for 'favourite songs of the year' for me. Young Galaxy's album Falsework came out a month and a half ago, but I didn't get around to listening to it until recently, and "Factory Flaws" jumped out immediately.
It's an infectious orchestral-disco-pop song about people coming together and, well, celebrating the flaws in each other. It's clearly influenced by the 80s, but doesn't sound dated in the least. And of course, McCandless' vocals are spot on.
I'm also really sad that they evidently had to cancel their west coast tour dates early next year, and hope they'll be back before long. But in the meantime, enjoy the "Factory Flaws"
Not only have The Sumner Brothers recently released a brand new album, The Hell In Your Mind, but this weekend they are hosting their tenth annual Christmas show, A Sumner Brothers XMas.
"Ant Song" sees the Brothers Bob & Brian ramping up their intensity for a sprawling seven minutes of raw & gritty rock and driving guitars, about cordyceps, the "zombie ant" creating, insect-colonising fungus.
As for the show, just look at this lineup:
The Sumner Brothers (with Kenton Loewen & Joseph Lubinsky-Mast), Johnny 99, Twin Bandit, Kathleen Nisbet of Viper Central, Colebrook Shepherds, Gabriel Mintz, Sarah Jane Scouten, A.P. Dugas (The Ganges River Band), Mike Giacolino (Ole Tinderr), Emile & Kesia (The Good Ship Edaleen), Real Ponchos, Etienne Tremblay, Elliot C. Way (of The WILD NORTH), and Jayne Trimble.
It's all going down this Saturday, the 19th, at the Rickshaw.
Click the image to hear the playlist!
It's finally that time of year. I've officially decided to listen to holiday and/or christmas songs.
That and it just so happens to be our 25th playlist, so that was a nice number to do this one on.
There's a large collection of indie Christmas songs (tons from right here in Vancouver), and at this point Said The Whale can almost do a full length one!
So gather up some blankets, and a hot toddy, and either sit by the fire or turn the yule log channel on, and listen to some Canadian Holiday Classics!
(If you have other awesome suggestions to add into the playlist, leave them in the comment section below.)
One of my favourite albums of 2015 just keeps giving! Half Moon Run just released a very odd video for their song "I Can't Figure Out What's Going On" from their album Sun Leads Me On.
It's another video that I don't quite know what is going on (like the Yukon Blonde video for "I Wanna Be Your Man") but I like it! Except for all the owls, they creep me out.
Have a watch below, and if you're reading this from Ontario or Europe - be sure to check out the tour dates coming up in the next weeks/months.
Sometimes when a band loses a member, they'll spin their wheels for a little bit before getting back at it. Not The Provincial Archive, though. When keyboardist Nathan Burge unexpectedly left the band, the remaining three members wasted little time getting back in the studio to release a new, self-titled EP with producer Nik Kozub, recording the songs live-off-the-floor.
The EP is a little more rock-oriented than their previous stuff -- but catchy as ever -- as you can tell from "Bad Connection" with its fuzzy, 90s alt-rock feel. Listen below, or check out the behind the scenes studio video above, set to the song.
Earlier this month, Radio Radio released the first song off their brand new album Light in the Sky, which will be the duo's first album entirely in English (the previous four were all in Chiac, a variety of Acadian French heavily mixed and structured with English).
It'll be out February 16th on Bonsound, and they're touring in the new year, including a show right here at the Biltmore on March 26th, but if you can't wait until then you can put the new song "Tonight's The Night" in your earholes right now. And I'm telling you, you better get your dance pants on before you listen.
It's been a little while since we last heard from Jordan Klassen, but he's back with a brand new songs off his upcoming album Javelin. The album is out February 19th, and was recorded in an isolated studio outside El Paso, Texas, with Jordan producing and recording nearly all the instruments himself.
Check out the lead single below, a soaring tune called "Baby Moses" that would fit perfectly on a mixtape between The Shins and Sufjan Stevens.