Here's something strange and haunting and wintry to get you started as we ease into 2009. La Blogotheque (a French music blog that gets some pretty cool live performances out of some pretty cool bands) recently sat down with Antlers. They recorded this video in a doll shop.

The Antlers - Shiva - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

You'll want to read the description, too.... » more

The Broken Bells single "The High Road" is available for free download today, and only today, from BrokenBells.com.

First impression: It sounds like The Shins playing a video game. "Wincing"-era Shins, which, I'm not sure is a good thing.... » more

Speaking of ol' Nellie, I just saw her review of Philip Norman’s “John Lennon: A Life" in the Times. It's actually more of a book summary than a review, but she does it in the style of Lennon's "In His Own Write." it takes some work, but it's an interesting read. I'm most proud of deciphering that "Zimmergum" refers to Bob Dylan.

Try it out.... » more

Stereogum has collected an album's worth of indie Christmas tunes for your listening pleasure, or whatever. Some of it's interesting, some of it's boring, but it's got a lot of hipster bands — The Parenthetical Girls, Lindstrøm, Banjo or Freakout.

I don't know. The problem with Christmas music is not that it's not indie enough. It's just not that interesting. But if you stray... » more

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• The NME has a review of Julian Casablancas' live solo show. He'll be at Terminal 5 Jan. 14 & 15.

• Jimmy Fallon house band The Roots have been composing little pieces of interstitial music for the intros and outros of the show that they've been calling sandwiches. Now they're up to 1,000! To celebrate, Questlove has been posting a bunch of them here. If you don't feel... » more

"Kill Rock Stars is very excited to announce that on April 6th, 2010 we will be adding Elliott Smith’s 'Roman Candle' and 'From a Basement on the Hill' records to our catalog."

And to celebrate, they're offering a free download of a previously unreleased track, "Cecilia/Amanda." Get it here.... » more

Broken Bells is the collaboration between The Shins' James Mercer and Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse). And Pitchfork has rounded up a bunch of URLs like this one that play looped samples, that are presumably previews from the forthcoming album.

Sounds very Mousey. I can't wait to hear the whole album.... » more

Sarah M. is bringing back her celebration of women rockers this summer. The list of confirmed artists is up here, and includes Emmylou Harris, Erikah Badu, The Indigo Girls, Corinne Bailey Rae and Metric.... » more

So I do have a fascination with 8-bit music. That's out there. And I hate Christmas music. That's also a well known fact.

So what do we do when the two are combined. Well, we love it. I actually have two different albums of the stuff. And three makes a trend, so here's your blog post:

Rush Coil this year has released a digital album of 8-bit renditions of traditional carols including... » more