Caves - 1993

Above the Tree & The E Side - Wild

Thee Oh Sees - Carrion Crawler / The Dream

And back to the basics. It's been a long time. Life and such.

Thee Oh Sees, who release an album maybe every 3/4 of a year, are back with a great album from start to finish...no filler, no fluff. This is pure psych garage rock n roll with plenty of reverb, hooks, riffs, driving drums, ohs, ahs, guitar solos, and 10 punches in your face.

Blackbird Blackbird

A symphony of glitchy, dreamy, compression-ridden tracks consumes the music of Blackbird Blackbird. This genius comes from the 23 year old solo vocalist/producer Mike Maramag. His sounds travel a brightened path of psychedelia, chill wave and dream pop. Blackbird Blackbird recently signed to Arcade Sound Ltd. joining the likes of Memoryhouse and Millionyoung. Video of 'Pure' along with some other goodies (free downloads) below. Enjoy.

Give You Everything by blackbird blackbird




Grab Bag

Therapies Son - Touching Down

Now this is what this site is all about. Therapies Son is 19 year old Californian Alex Jacobs whose debut EP Over The Sea is due to be released sometime this March. His music is a very soothing piano-driven psych pop. Video for his track "Touching Down" below, synced to what looks like mainly movie footage, including some from 2001: A Space Odyssey which makes sense considering the track title and lyrical content. I think I am in love with it because the piano portion reminds me of a gentler, slower, more emotional version of a track released by Josh Homme's The Desert Sessions, the song "I Wanna Make It Wit'Chu" off of Volume 9/10 but the songs are not really all that similar..i dunno. But you will love this if you are into psych-alt-country-folk outfit Cotton Jones as well as dreampop group Beach House. Very pleasant music, can't wait for the EP.

PVT - Church With No Magic (2010)

PVT (formerly Pivot) is an Australian group whose influences are all over the place. For the most part, it is pretty much very experimental electro indie rock. It seems like there are no standard song structures and the sound/mood/genre of the music can change drastically from song to song. The album Church With No Magic is very sample-heavy and sometimes even gets into intelligent dance music (IDM) or math-rock territory. Whatever the ultimate classificaton, there is a good chance you will like this if you are into El Ten Eleven, Animal Collective, Yeasayer, Prefuse 73, and/or Wolf Parade (just to hit some potential common ground). The video for their hit track "Window" is insanely schizophrenic and edited very creatively, tracking the band from playing the song in their studio to a live show without moving a muscle. Check it out below:

Star Slinger - Mornin'

We posted on Star Slinger a while back. This sample-heavy electronic beatmaker and producer is back with his debut album (beat tape) Volume 1 that carries a psychedelic thump along with soulful, uplifting, dancefloor vibes. This Manchester-based artist continues to impress. He is most definitely one of the leaders of the space-age generation. When will we have a dancefloor in space/on the moon? Below is a hazy, colorful, and kaleidoscopic video by Alan Jensen for hit track "Mornin'."

Verdena - WOW (2011)

More evidence of the global reach of this current surge in psychedelic tidewaters, Verdena is an experimental Italian psych-prog-grunge group that has been around since 1998. You will enjoy early Verdena if you are a fan of Nirvana and other grunge-era groups. You will enjoy later Verdena circa 2005 to present day if you enjoy a mixture of Radiohead, Pink Floyd, The Flaming Lips, and Sonic Youth. You just might enjoy both periods. They have just released a new 2 CD album called WOW, and it is a combination of acoustic rockers, psychedelic jams, and ethereal space rock, all twisted in the Italian tongue. The whole thing is uploaded on YouTube. Below are a couple of standout tracks.

Shapes Have Fangs - Dinner in the Dark (2011)

Austin, TX is a psych-center for pleasing psych-otic people and pleasing psych-edelic music. New group Shapes Have Fangs will release their debut album Dinner in the Dark through The Black Angels' Reverberation Appreciation Society. Their music is most easily classified as distorted fuzzed-out desert rock. Through their tunes, they sound like peers of The Black Angels with a similar vision, especially with regards to The Black Angels' latest and most upbeat offering Phosphene Dream. The video below for "The Desert (Has a Place for You)", directed by Oswald James, is a journey into their sun-scorched musical road trip. It was apparently all filmed on abandoned Western film sets in the Chihuahan Desert. Grab the album here, only 500 copies! (or digital) : http://reverberationappreciationsociety.com/

Tahiti 80 - Solitary Bizness (2010)

Apologies for the long delay. No more of that. Promising psychedelic indie pop from seasoned French group Tahiti 80. These guys have been around since 1993, forming to share their affinity for indie music, new wave, and 60's pop. At first glance, their music prior to the 2010 EP Solitary Bizness sounds more poppy than psychy. This EP precedes their 5th studio album, The Past, The Present & The Possible which is slated for release in early 2011. A very fitting album title for the current state of music. Hopefully, the album will be comprised of tracks similar to "Solitary Bizness," which at first sounds slightly discordant and uncomfortably poppy but soon resolves this with a nice bass groove, some Ghostbusters-y synths, and entrancing vocal harmonies to accompany the repetitive chorus. As the song builds, you get more layers and it's just a nice little ditty. Alright?

Acid Washed - Acid Washed

Well, it just seems that french electronic music is booming at the moment, and so here is another treat from that part of the world. Influenced by a combination of 90s-era Detroit techno/house and DFA disco anthems, Acid Washed delivers fairly minimal and usually hypnotic electronica. Please see video below for their first single, "General Motors, Detroit, America," to gain insight into their minds and their recommendation on how to perceive the things around you. Prepare your eyeballs.

Mock & Toof - Tuning Echoes

Nudisco, cosmic/space disco, digifunk, however you want to call it...Mock & Toof make it. And they do it very quirkily. About half of their latest LP's 13 tracks are fantastic while the other half are either weirdly interesting or just nice soundscapes. If you are into this, grab the album, Tuning Echoes, and give them incentive to keep us dancing.

Below is a clip for the funky track "Shoeshine Boogie."

To give you a sense of their capability to construct captivating science-fiction-y soundscapes, here is a really nice fan-made video for "Day Ken Died." If you like hot air balloons or the idea of them, you will like the video.

Digikid84

80s-loving, synth-crazy, retro digifunk, disco-diva outfit. From the same womb as Daft Punk?

Circulus - My Body is Made of Sunlight

Not really sure what to say about this...i'm a little scared of it but ultimately fascinated by its strangeness. No, it scares me.

Theophilus London - Flying Overseas

And it's official. Psychedelic has hit hip-hop. You can find it here and there with the Houston and Huntsville scenes, in Kid Cudi's stuff, among others, but with Theophilus London, you get a new slice of psych-hop laced with nostalgic elements from the funk, soul and R&B meccas of the 1970s. A bass line so deep, funky, and simple...it takes control of your nodding and hip-pulsing controls immediately. Sandwiched with the bass, there is London's vocal delivery, which focuses on the breathing pronunciation of syllables and their syncopated blend with the music, Devonte Hynes' and Solange Knowles' (Beyonce's sister) beaming soulful Motown-drenched chorus, as well as a filming style that combines old film static, pulsing auras, beach haze, and psychedelic visuals.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Round & Round

Please find below the Wayne Coyne-directed/filmed and George Salisbury-edited psychedelic video for Ariel Pink's latest hit track Round & Round. This was all captured on Coyne's iPhone during The Flaming Lips/Ariel Pink tour. The entire album, Before Today, is a refreshing reminder of certain ingenious songwriters from times before today. Artists like Iggy Pop, David Bowie, and other enigmatic, schizophrenic-at-times, and androgynous-when-necessary funky frontmen.

The Upsidedown - The Town With Bad Wiring

More evidence that psychedelic music is here to stay, The Upsidedown's new album The Town With Bad Wiring is filled with widespread influences including shoegazey guitars, Dandy Warhols trippy pop weirdness, and Velvet Underground style groove, haziness and imagery. If that doesn't help you read into their sound and style, they are signed to the Dandy Warhols' record label, Beat the World Records, and also to Reverb Records (latest release), reverb being a key word. Video for "Hang On" below.

Videos for "Silver Wind" and "Mea Maxima Culpa" from 2008 release Human Destination below:

Lord Huron - Mighty EP

Here we have a tropical psych-folk group from L.A. by the name of Lord Huron. Have some patience with this one and it will pay off as it is a floating tune that just carries you higher as it goes along. Enter their world below:

The Joy Formidable - A Balloon Called Morning

Recorded in a London bedroom but bred for a psychedelics-enthused arena, this ladyled outfit pulls out a comfortable shoegaze-soaked blanket from a closet that has been shut for too long.

Bachelorette - My Electric Family

Once again, the third wave of psychedelia has washed ashore in New Zealand. Great review of the album here. Basically, Bachelorette is a one human collective including Annabel Alpers and no on else. She is from Christcurch and describes her music as "Bachelorette took too many mushrooms and fell in love with a computer." That is good enough for me. The first video is for "Her Rotating Head" off of My Electric Family. The second video is for "Complex History of a Dying Star" off of her first album Isolation Loops, also great.