Brooklyn’s White Rabbits are prolifically appearing on the Letterman Show.  They performed there again last month and blew the doors off Letterman’s studio.  Check ’em out playing their song Temporary.  You gotta love the dual-drumming attack and particularly the joy evinced by the drummer on the left.  The song continues to ramp throughout, with a nicely off-kilter guitar solo tossed in.  Reminds of early Gang of Four.  We’ll write more about this band another time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYTuwerLcNc&feature=related

The Shins performed today on KCRW and played new favorite Simple Song and old favorite New Slang backed by The Watson Twins (Jenny Lewis, etc.).  Check ’em out below. Update: Check out the entire show at bottom.

It’s been weeks since we’ve posted anything about Sharon Van Etten or her phenomenal album, Serpents.  So without further adieu, checkout below Van Etten and band members performing Life Of His Own, Give Out, Leonard and Serpents on WBEZ’s Sound Opinion show.

North Carolina’s Bowerbirds‘ new album, The Clearing, is one of our favorites so far this year.  Coincidentally, the band recently performed for North Shore Sessions in the warehouse district of downtown Minneapolis, singing their songs Overcome With Light and Brave World.  Rarely has a song (Overcome With Light) sung by a band suited a sound space so well.  Warehouses simply rule for sound. Check it out and then check out a video about the band’s making of The Clearing (these are real humans), which you can purchase HERE or on Dead Oceans Records.

Jack White’s new album, Blunderbuss, is breaking all “indie” sales records and the blogosphere is enraptured.  To see why Jack is jackin’ it, just check out this performance of Ball and Biscuit, Sixteen Saltines and Freedom at 21 on Later with Jools Holland.  Some day this boy will learn how to play guitar.  Oh my!

As we’ve written about before the “supergroup” dubbed New Multitudes (Jim James, Jay Farrar, Will Johnson, and Anders Parker), have taken a page out of the Billy Bragg/Wilco songbook and released a commendable new album that combines newly-crafted music and arrangements with previously unsung Woody Guthrie lyrics.

Today the band’s label, Rounder Records, has released the third in a series of videos of the highly-hirsute band playing songs unplugged from the new album.  First check out below the newly-released Fly High performance featuring Anders Parker on lead vocals.  And in case you missed ’em, after check out the Jim James-sung Talking Empty Bed Blues, followed by the familiar (too familiar?) vocals of Jay Farrar on Careless Reckless Love.

Fly High:

Talking Empty Bed Blues:

Careless Reckless Love:

The Soweto Gospel Choir recently scaled down to 11 (from their normal 30+) to fit into NPR’s Tiny Desk.  We’ve been fans of this ensemble since we first heard their debut album, Voices From Heaven, in 2005.  Since then they’ve gone onto big and bigger things.  Singing in multiple African languages (and occasionally English), SGC mixes African gospel music with everything from reggae to pop.  And through it all one hears celebration and purpose.  If you’re lacking in either category, hit play and let their joyous acapella sound burn off the day’s haze.

We’ve written about the upcoming Neil Young & Crazy Horse album before.  Now check another manifestation:  the first official video for Oh Susannah from their new album Americana, which comes out on June 5th.  Intriguing.  The track features the standard harrowing lyrics of the original, set against a disturbing dust-bowl-esque video background, but with the group’s altered, crunchy sound that seems to have been (judging by the closing remarks) recorded in one live take.  B-A-N-J-O indeed.

You can pre-order the album at http://neilyoung.com and get Oh Susannah at http://smarturl.it/m5zexo.  Seems like the real deal to us.

We wrote last week about Lisa Hanigan’s appearance at the Dutch Motel Mozaique Music Festival.   Now check out (courtesy of 3voor12) check out major up-and-comers Bowerbirds, Django Django (whose new album is garnering critic huzzahs), and Patrick Watson, and then the always-stunning Antlers and the perfectly-over-the-top Of Montreal.

Bowerbirds:

Django Django (if you’re short on time, check out Default at 4:31):

Patrick Watson:

The Antlers:

Of Montreal:

It’s the day after Sunday (we won’t say the word), and we’re enveloped in the evil fog.  So summer has officially arrived.  And with summer comes thoughts of The Beach Boys.  Which reminds us:  the reunited Beach Boys are coming to the Santa Barbara Bowl on May 28th (Memorial/Anniversary Day), and will include Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, David Marks and a host of backers. What better way to spend Memorial Day?

Before we get ’round to listening to the real deal (last year’s Smile Box Set is highly recommended), in time of need we keep returning to two covers of the Boys’ God Only Knows.  The first (featuring Canada’s talented Joe Grass on pedal steel) matches the morning’s mood.  The second is by the phenomenal (and phenomenally horribly named) Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. and never fails to lift.  We’ve written about the preternaturally-talented DEJJ before and love their Grizzly-Bear-As-Applied-to-Beach-Boys-and-Vocals-Beyond effect on this cover in particular.

Joe Grass:

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.:

DJEE at Troubadour:

Another: