UK duo Disclosure (brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence) has been garnering huge attention around the globe, with artists and fans scrambling to catch their shows and rave reviews for their electro-pop houseparty album Settle.  To get a feel for their dancefloor, check out their recent video for F for You below.

Disclosure – F For You from Tom Watson on Vimeo.

We are thrilled that Glaswegian pop-maestros Belle & Sebastian will play their only California show at the Santa Barbara Bowl on July 17th (one of only ten U.S. shows on their world tour).  Best Coast will open.  We have waited 17 long years to see the band live so the 17th of July is a particularly apropos date for our first gander of the band live.  Sure to be one of the concert highlights of the year.  Get ye there.

On August 27th, the band will release The Third Eye Centre on Matador – a collection of B-sides, rarities, and non-LP tracks from the last decade. To get a feel, you can listen below to the new, pop-kaleidoscopic track Your Cover’s Blown (Miaoux Miaoux Remix) from the new album.  The Third Eye Centre compilation is the next installment in the band’s rarities collections since the much-loved and lauded album Push Barman To Open Old Wounds (2005).  The album’s track list precedes the new song and the band’s tour dates follow at bottom.  The band plays the Montreal Jazz Festival tonight.

Track listing:

I’m A Cuckoo (Avalanches Remix)
Suicide Girl
Love On The March
Last Trip
Your Secrets
Your Cover’s Blown (Miaoux Miaoux Remix)
I Took A Long Hard Look
Heaven In The Afternoon
Long Black Scarf
The Eighth Station Of The Cross Kebab House
I Didn’t See It Coming (Richard X Mix)
(I Believe In) Travellin’ Light
Stop, Look And Listen
Passion Fruit
Desperation Made A Fool Of Me
Blue Eyes Of A Millionaire
Mr Richard
Meat And Potatoes
The Life Pursuit

Tour:

JULY
4– Quebec City Festival – Quebec
5– Montreal Jazz Festival – Montreal
6– Ottawa Bluesfest – Ottawa, Canada
7– Toronto Urban Folk Festival – Toronto
9 – Bank Of America Pavillion – Boston
10– Skyline Stage @ The Mann – Philadelphia
11– Prospect Park – NYC
12– Merriweather Post Pavillion – Wash DC
13– Stage AE – Pittsburgh
14– Bunbury Music Festival – Cincinatti
16– ACL @ The Moody Theatre – Austin
17– Santa Barbara Bowl – Santa Barbara
18– Twilight Series– Salt Lake City
20– Pitchfork Festival – Chicago
26– Open Air Festival – San Sebastian, Spain
27th July – Low Cost Festival, Spain

AUGUST
15– Sonorama – Spain
17– Parades de Coura – Portugal
23– Rock en Seine – Paris, France
30– Openair Festival – Zurich, Switzerland
SEP 1– End Of The Road Festival – Dorset
SEP 6– Bestival – Isle Of Wight

Last time we checked it was still summertime. Contributing to that feel this week is Noah And The Whale’s official video for their bubbly coming-of-age song Lifetime, which is off of their new album Heart of Nowhere.  The video was created by Fourteen-Nineteen, a project which aims to celebrate and critically engage with the work of young photographers through publishing, exhibitions, online galleries and more.  Check it out.

It’s that time in America.  It’s high summer on the 4th of July.  It’s fitting then that you check out Aoife O’Donovan’s single Red & White & Blue & Gold.  You might be celebrating on a beach in Malibu (like O’Donovan) or a Secret Beach on the American Riviera, or on Ponta Vedra in Florida, or on New England sands.  Or you might be a part of the larger American majority celebrating in between.  Regardless, we wish you peace and safety.  And a girl on a bike.  Red & White & Blue & Gold is off of O’Donovan’s recently-released debut solo album, Fossils. O’Donovan is currently on tour and will be coming through California in July with the Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion “Radio Romance Tour,” including a stop at the Vina Robles Amphitheater on Quatorze Juillet (or Bastille Day…how ’bout July 14th?). Below the official video is a live performance of the song for Rhapsody by Donovan while at SXSW.

We’ve been singing the praises of Josh Rouse and his new album The Happiness Waltz.  This week Rouse premiered the official video for the album’s lilting title track.  After, watch Rouse performing It’s Good To Have You from the new album while in the WFUV studios.  The song smacks a bit of Paul Simon (never a bad thing), and Rouse’s band is top shelf.  The Happiness Waltz, available now HERE.

Hot off the heals of her fiery closing performance at Saturday’s BET Awards, Janelle Monáe has released the official video for the second track, Dance Apocalyptic, off of her impending (9/10/13) new album The Electric Lady.  Check out the video below with Monáe even letting her hair down a bit.  Fun stuff, with Monáe’s vocal resembling Michael at times (a good thing).  The video naturally includes a zombie and various apocalyptos.

Atoms For Peace kicked off their worldwide tour last month by holding a dress rehearsal at Los Angeles’ Café-Club Fais Do-Do, which the band dubbed (if you will) Club Amok.  At long last, today AFP put up vignettes from the show in which the band performed Default and Dropped from their latest album, Amok.  Check ’em out below. We can’t wait for their October 17th show at the Santa Barbara Bowl.

Even though it’s winter in their native New Zealand, Fat Freddy’s Drop dropped one on us this week and took us back to our adolescent summers when the radio was filled with high-quality soul-psychedelia from The Undisputed Truth, Curtis Mayfield, The Isley Brothers, The Temptations, Ohio Players, Sly and the Family Stone, Dramatics, Cornelius Brothers, O’Jays, and yes, even Rare Earth.  Those were heady radio times that still resound in our minds all these years later.

We had heard mention of the popular Wellington band Fat Freddy’s Drop, but only in the last week have we actually listened to the band.  This is a dangerous game to be playing since we hold to the philosophy that nostalgia can be deadly to one’s musical soul.  But take a listen below and watch the (somewhat bizarre puppetry/marionette-dominated) video for Clean The House off of their impending third album Blackbird.  Ya gotta love the guitar work of Tehimana Kerr (aka Jetlag Johnson) on this song.  And it takes us back to those lazy, vinyl-spinning, poolside summers of Central California.  Forgive us.  We’ll be back soon with something newer and arguably more progressive.  In the meantime, though, enjoy this groove.

We’re in full summer swing around the northern hemisphere, nonetheless have found ourselves in a bit of a post-Glastonbury miasma (failed again). The perfect match for the mood came to us in the form of Eleanor Friedberger performing her song Stare At The Sun on KEXP.  The song is off of Friedberger’s just released, superb second solo album Personal Record.  Check Stare At The Sun in all it’s two-plus minutes of glory and melancholia.  After, is the song’s official video. The song’s lyrics follow at bottom.

“In the back of the of taxi, you turned off the TV
And read me a book on your phone
Here’s the return of your skeleton key
Oh baby the places we’ve gone

If that was goodbye than I must be high
You know I’ll be seeing you soon
If that was goodbye and the snow in July
As it hailed in the middle of June

Give me your toothpaste
Give me your ointment
Give me your body and then
Keep this in amber
Keep our appointment
Remember the things that we sang

If that was goodbye than I must be high
You must be the sugar I need
If that was goodbye than I am a fly
And the future is guaranteed

‘Cause when I’m with you everything’s treasure
I forget what it’s like to be wrong
I’m far from the town in the suburbs of your pleasure
I’ve been in exile so long
I’m trying not to stare at the sun
No, I’m trying not to stare at the sun
I’m trying not to stare at the sun

Cooperative coffee and synchronized showers
I try not to look at the clock
Goodbye to your castle
Wave from the tower
And drop me a line from the dock
If that was goodbye than you must be high
And maybe I’m losing a friend
If that was goodbye then the sea has run dry
So I fill it in with tears instead

‘Cause when I’m with you everything’s treasure
I forget what it’s like to be gone
I’m far from the town in the suburbs of your pleasure
I’ve been in exile so long
I’m trying not to stare at the sun
I’m trying not to stare at the sun
I’m trying not to stare at the sun

‘Cause when I’m with you everything’s treasure
I forget what it’s like to be gone
I’m far from the town in the suburbs of your pleasure
I’ve been in exile so long.
I’m trying not to stare at the sun
I’m trying not to stare at the sun
I’m trying not to stare at the sun”

My Morning Jacket is finally receiving widespread attention.  Yesterday the band was the subject of a CBS Sunday Morning interview segment.  You can check out the transcript of the episode, watch two additional web-exclusive vignettes (including a live Wonderful by James in a garment that’s an elbow-patch-shy of a shirt) and stream some of their music HERE.