The Lab

Dirty on Purpose are Doug Marvin, Joe Jurewicz, DJ Boudreau and George Wilson. They live in Brooklyn, NY, and have been a band since they met randomly through friends in 2002. (more)

Dirty on Purpose are Doug Marvin, Joe Jurewicz, DJ Boudreau and George Wilson. They live in Brooklyn, NY, and have been a band since they met randomly through friends in 2002. Their brand of shoegaze pop has earned them some nice press and charmed them some nice fans over the years with their releases Dead Volcanoes on RCRDLBL.com and Like Bees, Hallelujah Sirens and Sleep Late For a Better Tomorrow on North Street Records. On these releases, they have also collaborated with some lovely female singers Jaymay, Holly Miranda and Erika Forster. (close)

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The Jealous Girlfriends make it work. The Brooklyn four-piece pull together the tunefulness of Anglo New Wave and BritPop, the aggression and energy of Washingtonian indie rock ñ both district and state - and infuse it all with a little soul, working an alchemy that transforms these base musical elements into songs crackling with tension and excitement that are instantly memorable while revealing something new with every listen. (more)

The Jealous Girlfriends make it work. The Brooklyn four-piece pull together the tunefulness of Anglo New Wave and BritPop, the aggression and energy of Washingtonian indie rock ñ both district and state - and infuse it all with a little soul, working an alchemy that transforms these base musical elements into songs crackling with tension and excitement that are instantly memorable while revealing something new with every listen.

Overtop a rhythmic foundation laid down by drummer Michael Fadem, Josh Abbott and Holly Miranda's buzzsaw guitars carom and careen against Alex Lipsen's square wave synths as their voices duet and duel overtop in tones that are playful and plaintive, menacing and mesmerizing. It's this potent lineup that has crafted their eponymous album following a 2005 debut mini-album featuring only Miranda and Lipsen.

The Jealous Girlfriends have already achieved a tremendous amount for a wholly independent band, earning that blessing and curse of being one of the best-kept secrets in independent music. Now signed to Good Fences Records, they're set to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world.

Armed with hooks, barbs, and velvet-lined bludgeons, The Jealous Girlfriends - the album - makes a striking statement that reveals The Jealous Girlfriends - the band - as an outfit that bends and pushes against the boundaries of rock music not so much with the intent to break them, but simply to see what kind of shapes they can make. (close)

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Sometimes even the inkling of a first impression is enough to tell you that a band is destined to shape the pop landscape for years to come. A band with a twinkle in their collective eye and their hearts on their sleeves, a band that look, feel and sound completely right. (more)

Sometimes even the inkling of a first impression is enough to tell you that a band is destined to shape the pop landscape for years to come. A band with a twinkle in their collective eye and their hearts on their sleeves, a band that look, feel and sound completely right. A band who seem to have been around forever, who belong to a different time altogether, who express so perfectly all that makes pop music wonderful, that it seems only just and proper that they should exist.

New Adventures are such a band.

For it's not just their attire but their ambition of song that conveys a kind of stateliness only usually acquired through time immemorial. This is music heavy with decayed grandeur; beautiful yet sinister, with a significance oft missing from today's trend for fast-buck, instant-fame, mass-produced miscellany. Music to fill cathedrals to the rafters and every chamber of your heart. Music that matters.

Friends since university, the four boys had been playing together for as long as they care to remember: as Nick puts it, "It was always the plan". Jez had long honed his captivating voice and won the opportunity to unleash it on the world when he invaded another band's performance "and for some reason wasn't kicked off stage". Raph - he of the bass - was more or less a founder member. Steve had been "playing coat hangers" since he was a kid and eventually found his muse in the form of lead guitar. Nick's addition to the band preceded a 4-date tour in which they had their van and all of their equipment stolen, but rather than being cast aside as some bad luck omen he was in fact given the responsibility of the beat on a full-time basis. "I think the collective suffering bonded us in a 'Stick it to the Man' kind of togetherness. I was in for the long haul!". And so the band existed for some time.

The quartet finished higher education and decamped to London, with Steve and Jez indulging their love of vintage gear by flogging from a shop in Covent Garden. It was here that one day Helen popped in for some jeans and left with grander ideas. "Maybe it was fate or good luck, but they were the best pair of jeans I ever bought". She took up the keys, provided some lush backing vocals, and revealed to the rest of the band what they'd been missing all along. "She was the final piece," says Jez, and for Steve "our best musician". The vintage vibe swept through the rest of the band and brought look and sound into close quarter.

The resulting democracy set to work spinning their threads of influence together, slowly awakening their own sound, checking and rechecking their individual touch points for a source of inspiration. "The classical music I resented as a rebellious teen ended up having a great impact on me", says Jez, a sentiment with which the rest of the band would concur. Of his soaring, heartbreaking vocal he's far more humble. "It just comes out when I sing my own words. I rarely enjoy listening to my own voice but I love singing, which is a strange contradiction". Strange indeed when you hear what happens when Jez puts his pipes into action. Timeless yet vulnerable, it perfectly pilots New Adventures' vessel of planet-sized pop.

Like Arcade Fire without the aloofness; Radiohead minus the melodrama, New Adventures invoke Wayne Coyne's spirit of music as emotional call-and-response and cast it across Wilco's sepia-washed sunsets, all deftly conjured with their own seventh sense for a pop melody. The band will tell you that the scope and stature of their output redoubles with every song Jez presents for them to breathe life into: according to Helen "He just keeps getting better and better". Indeed such is Jez's sense of perfectionism that he reckons he'll spend the rest of his life "trying to write the perfect love song". Call it a hunch, but we don't think it'll take him that long.

Their ambitions are rooted in modesty but arc inevitably toward the stars. New Adventures stand at the dawn of their own revolution, hands outstretched for you to join them. (close)

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Yes, it is a bear, but it's also a great band from Perth, Australia who are now based in America. (more)

Yes, it is a bear, but it's also a great band from Perth, Australia who are now based in America.

The Panda Band could be best described as art-tech-indie-pop. Art: because of their crafty arrangements 'n' tech: because they play with effects, keys and samples 'n' indie: because by choosing to run their own label, they are in the drivers seat 'n' pop: because they are big on catchy, layered melodies and sing-a-long bits. You could also throw ironic, vaudevillian, intelligent and addictive into the adjective stew, but we won't so pretend that we didn't write this bit.

As the follow up to their 2005 EP Sleepy Little Deathtoll Town, The Panda Band independently released their first album This Vital Chapter (we're almost not even here) in Australia (August 2006) where it has been met with critical acclaim from press such as Rolling Stone, Sydney Morning Herald, The Melbourne Age and various street press. National radio station Triple J selected it as their feature album and presented the August promotional tour, which had sold out shows in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane.

In North America the album was released in September through Filter US Recordings and Fontana Distribution. The band have received airplay on Nic Harcourt's Morning Becomes Eclectic and several other KCRW programs as well as scoring Myspace Pick of the Week. (close)

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I'm a singer/songwriter who grew up between two villages in the South Wales valleys with not much else to do but learn how to play a number of instruments and start to write my own songs. (more)

I'm a singer/songwriter who grew up between two villages in the South Wales valleys with not much else to do but learn how to play a number of instruments and start to write my own songs. I set up my own label Self Raising Records in 2006 and put out my first 7" 'Good Coat' which had lots of nice things said about it.

Since then I've put out two other songs as limited releases - 'You Get Goodbyes' which got lots of radio play (thanks to everyone who supported) and 'Your Love Is A Tease' whose video features all my toys from childhood, some ace people have remixed my songs which you can hear on my MySpace profile, and I've been spending my time going around the place playing gigs and busking on the London underground. (If you see me, please smile!)

I've been lucky enough to play with some of my favourite artists including Noah & The Whale, James Yuill, Kathryn Williams, Bass Clef, Mr Hudson & The Library and Peter & The Wolf as well as playing at Glastonbury and a nice string of festivals coming up in 2008.

I play live with a guitar, childhood instruments, a loop pedal, a synth and handclaps, and make music often descibed as folk disco to make people dance, smile, laugh and occasionally think a little bit. (close)

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Secret Broadcast is a 3-piece indie/rock band that formed in early 2006 after Matt Lightstone moved from Toronto to Calgary and met Bryan Craig and John de Jesus. (more)

Secret Broadcast is a 3-piece indie/rock band that formed in early 2006 after Matt Lightstone moved from Toronto to Calgary and met Bryan Craig and John de Jesus. Together they started writing songs that combined elements of rock, funk, pop and old-school punk which garnered them an eclectic mix of comparisons such as The Rapture, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Pixies, U2 and The Police.

The band has built a reputation for their energetic live shows and has shared the stage with many prominent acts including Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, Zuckerbaby and The Beast of Eden. They've also been invited to perform at various music festivals including North-by-Northeast (NXNE), Vans Warped Tour, Canadian Music Week (CMW) and JunoFest.

Secret Broadcast's debut EP Plastic Fantastic, produced by Zuckerbaby's Reed Shimozawa, was released independently on August 25th 2007. (close)

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Noisy guitars of fuzz and echo thread through this group taking its name from Joseph Heller's satiric Catch-22. Heady vocals and lyrics from principal songwriter Jordan Jeffares coerce even the most pretentious into tapping toes. (more)

Noisy guitars of fuzz and echo thread through this group taking its name from Joseph Heller's satiric Catch-22. Heady vocals and lyrics from principal songwriter Jordan Jeffares coerce even the most pretentious into tapping toes. Hands clap and drums trip over flashy rhythms while guitars stutter through unique melodic progressions. Snowden, largely follows the evolution of Jeffares' post-collegiate home recordings in Athens and Atlanta. Impressed with his bedroom demos, Jeffares' brother put Jordan in touch with likeminded players and the band was born.

Having self-recorded and released its first EP, the group immediately charted all over indie radio in their home state of Georgia, prompting Jeffares and company to brave the long, monotonous drives up to New York for shows. The traveling quickly paid off with Snowden opening for groups such as the Unicorns, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Xiu Xiu and Arcade Fire. The group's Jade Tree debut, Anti-Anti, expands studio credit to include some tracks engineered by Erik Wofford (The Black Angels, Explosions in the Sky, My Morning Jacket) as well as a few helmed solely by Jeffares. Although Snowden grew from a rather isolated situation and mood, ironically those same conditions are what continues to draw listeners in. (close)

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If seeing is believing, then Soft has to be taken on blind faith. While the band has technically been in existence for four years, live appearances have been both few and scattered. Instead, the five men who comprise Soft (Johnny Reineck on vocals, Vincent Perini and Sam Wheeler on guitars, Dino Siampos on bass, and Chris Colley on drums) have preferred to spend their time out of public view, crafting their debut album with the kind of obsessive care that most bands reserve for their third or fourth records. (more)

If seeing is believing, then Soft has to be taken on blind faith. While the band has technically been in existence for four years, live appearances have been both few and scattered. Instead, the five men who comprise Soft (Johnny Reineck on vocals, Vincent Perini and Sam Wheeler on guitars, Dino Siampos on bass, and Chris Colley on drums) have preferred to spend their time out of public view, crafting their debut album with the kind of obsessive care that most bands reserve for their third or fourth records.

Beginning September of 2003, while most Williamsburg bands were using ProTools plugins to sound like they were making records in their bedroom, Soft was formed to do just the opposite. They wanted to make big, bright, shiny pop songs. They wanted their songs to sound huge. And they wanted their songs played in arenas.

For a year, the band wrote music five nights a week - no live appearances - and from their tiny Brooklyn practice space, they wrote the songs that would eventually become the Soft EP. Building on loose dance grooves, Soft took layers upon layers of shimmering guitar, added breathy melodies, and obsessively crafted them into perfect pop songs. While their approach to the studio was heavily inspired by Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine, Soft injected a new sense of pop savvy that owed more to INXS than the Jesus and Mary Chain.

And the bloggers loved it - Elbows Blog Aggregator called Soft 'the most blogged-about band of 2005'. The EP went on to hit #4 on Insound.com's best seller list. Soft's first NYC appearance was at Irving Plaza and went on to open for Mark Gardener of Ride, Hard Fi, Favourite Sons, and Sons and Daughters.

In early 2005, Soft again retreated to their studio for to write and record and obsessively tweak their debut album. Gone Faded proves that, despite the band's reclusive nature, Soft is no myth. (close)

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Vandaveer is the partly sunny, mostly cloudy, town-folk, city-pop song & dance routine penned and put forth by DC-based songsmith Mark Charles. (more)

Vandaveer is the partly sunny, mostly cloudy, town-folk, city-pop song & dance routine penned and put forth by DC-based songsmith Mark Charles. Grace & Speed, Vandaveer's debut record, entered this great big world in March 2007 via DC's Gypsy Eyes Records, earning stellar reviews and repeated comparisons to Donovan, Dylan, Drake, Waits, and scores more. Vandaveer has enjoyed the good fortune of performing up and down the east coast and beyond with a host of humbling artists, including Vashti Bunyan, Alejandro Escovedo, Smog, The Ditty Bops, Vetiver, Joan As Policewoman, and his dear friends in DC's ramshackle collective, The Federal Reserve. (close)

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The Wooden Sky traces its roots back through the winter of 2003, when with a collection of songs under his arm, Gavin Gardiner began to seek out musical collaborators to help bring his sketches out from the bedroom and onto the stage. (more)

The Wooden Sky traces its roots back through the winter of 2003, when with a collection of songs under his arm, Gavin Gardiner began to seek out musical collaborators to help bring his sketches out from the bedroom and onto the stage. It was soon after the first snow fall that Andrew Wyatt and Chris Cocca joined Gardiner and began to flush out ideas that would become their first EP. It was only after they had finished this record that they realized it possible to put their newfound interests on display. Moving from a makeshift studio and into Gardiner's garage in downtown Toronto, a place the three had come to call home only the year before, they began the plot to share their amateurish themes with others.

Certainly much has changed since those formative years huddled around space heaters and dodging noise complaints. Gone are the songs they began as teenagers and gone even is the name, Friday Morning's Regret, with which they had branded themselves. In its place stands the Wooden Sky, with new fulltime and moonlighting members Simon Walker, Anissa Heart and Andrew Kekewich. When Lost at Sea, the Wooden Sky's debut LP, was released in February 2007 to a sold-out Horseshoe Tavern and reveals the band arranging fragile folk songs in a context that has drawn comparison to such modern acts as the Great Lake Swimmers, Neutral Milk Hotel and Okkervil River.

The Wooden Sky tours frequently around Southern Ontario and into Quebec and has found itself playing alongside artists they greatly admire such as: Meligrove Band, Cuff the Duke, Matthew Barber, ohbijou, Final Fantasy, Sebastien Grainger, Jim Jenny and the Pinetops, the Acorn, Howe Gelb (Giant Sand), the Bicycles etc. This past summer saw the Wooden Sky tour across Western Canada, sharing the stage with ohbijou, Julie Doiron and Calvin Johnson. (close)

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