Jigga WHAT!

"Run This Town", the new Jay-Z/Rihanna/Kanye West track from The Blueprint 3, leaked this morning. Oh my goodness it's a banger...Yet another reason to follow @Questlove...

Sainthood

A little late to report but I was waiting for a track list that doesn't seem like will exist for another month or so...

Tegan and Sara announced that the new record "Sainthood" will be out October 27th. They recorded Sainthood with producers Chris Walla and Howard Redekopp (The New Pornographers). Walla produced the bands last LP The Con, while Redekopp worked with T+S on 2004's So Jealous. Walla plays bass on the album, while Death Cab For Cutie's Jason McGerr played drums. Touring guitarist Ted Gowans also contributed to the album. Sainthood was recorded at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, Calif. and McGerr's Two Sticks Audio in Seattle.

Sainthood (not Thainthood) from Tegan and Sara on Vimeo.

This week...

Heavy Rotation for the week...

Like the deserts miss the rain...

It’s amazing how hearing a song can transport you to another time and place from your past.
While working on a mix for a friend(and by mix I mean a 2G flash drive), I found myself getting nostalgic for the mid-90's/early-00's.
Lets take a trip in the Wayback Mr. Peabody!

This Week...

Heavy Rotation...comment and share your top five for the week. If you missed HR last week check it out here...

Happy Pride

June is Gay Pride Month so I thought this would be an appropriate time to take a look at some of my favorite modern queer musicians...

Tegan and Sara-
Tegan and Sara Quin are singer songwriters from Canada. At fifteen they picked up guitars and started recording music. By the end of the 1990s they had signed to Vapor Records and had begun to tour with fellow Canadians like Neil Young and the New Pornographers.


The Gossip-
The indie rock band, Gossip, was formed in the late nineties in Arkansas. They are now based in Portland, Oregon. Gossip is made up of singer Beth Ditto, drummer, Hannah Blilie, and guitarist, Brace Paine.


Peaches-
Peaches is the stage name of Canadian electro-punk musician, Merrill Nisker. She now resides in Berlin and has been called the reining Queen of electro-punk.


Uh Huh Her-
Camila Grey is a former member of the lo-fi rock band Mellowdrone and she had played bass and keyboards for a variety of artists, such as Dr. Dre, Melissa Auf der Maur, Busta Rhymes, and Kelly Osbourne. Leisha Hailey was formerly in The Murmurs and Gush and is also a successful actress.


Rufus Wainwright-
Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright is a Grammy-nominated, Canadian-American singer-songwriter. He has recorded five albums of original music, several EPs, and numerous tracks included on compilations and film soundtracks. He has also completed an opera originally commissioned by the Met.


Sleater-Kinney-
Sleater-Kinney was an American rock band formed in Olympia, Washington with members Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss . They were a vital part of the riot grrrl and punk scenes in Washington, although they later relocated to Portland, Oregon.

R.I.P. MJ

So this wouldn't be a proper music blog without mentioning the death of Michael Jackson...He was an immense talent and changed the course music forever. I will now pass the mic to the always amazing Carrie Brownstein who summed it up the best...

As you know by now, because you read about it or saw it on TV, because someone sent you a text message, or called you, or because your fellow employees have sent out countless email tributes and are now playing "Billie Jean" over the loudspeaker: Michael Jackson is dead.
Those are frightening words to write. They are more scary than any paparazzi photo of Jackson's nose crumbling to pieces; stranger than images of his faceless children wearing shrouds while shopping at the mall; creepier than his rumored skin disease, the burnt hair, the molestation allegations and trial, his chimpanzee confidante and Neverland combined.
Michael Jackson is dead, and now we have to come to terms with who he was and what it means to have him gone. For many of us of a certain age, Michael Jackson's Thriller was the album. The music contained therein wasn't relegated to the turntables we played it on. (These were our first turntables, usually part of some crappy combination stereo system that featured dual cassette players, a giant roving stereo dial and cheap speakers barely better than megaphones.) No, those songs on Thriller informed more than our musical taste; they taught us our dance moves, gave us a sense of style and transformed what we saw on television and in the movies.
Michael Jackson was our first superstar. He was masterful and mysterious and glittery. He invented pop as we know it today, the blown-up-and-about-to-burst version of pop. We obsessed over him before there were even the proper technological tools to aid in our obsession. But he was easy to find, because he was everywhere and everything: He was our soda, our videos, our radios and our bedroom floors. It was a thriller, no doubt; the man was pop and the man was king.
These were big times, the 1980s: big business, big hair, big stars. There was Michael Jackson and Madonna, Duran Duran and Prince, and all of our love could be stored in and directed upon these giant and alluring vessels who wanted to be adored, or so we thought. But eventually -- as it often does -- our love for these artists waned, and we directed our affections elsewhere. Most of these pop stars disappeared for a while or began practicing the arts of resuscitation and reinvention.
But Michael Jackson was different; his star never wholly faded, nor was it born anew. His light remained aglow, fueled both by his astronomical accomplishments and by our own eager imaginations. And we kept looking in his direction, out of pure love for his music, but also because the glimpses into his life were getting more shocking and bizarre. The glare kept coming back to find him, sometimes out of reverence, but also revealing to us a distortion of the man we thought we knew; an ugliness, a freakishness, a changeling.
Certainly there was a disconnect in our minds between the brilliant artist whose songs made us dance -- whom we exalted, and whom we gave credit for changing the landscape of music -- and Jackson's clearly troubled and pained personal life. For many of us, there were two different Michael Jacksons: the one whose life we watched like a circus, and the artist who had turned our ordinary lives into an extravaganza.
And now Michael Jackson is gone -- not just the part of him we loved and worshiped, but also those parts we never quite understood. We're left with a confounding and massive emptiness. Personally, I'd like to thank him for an immeasurable contribution to music, for his moves, and for transforming the word "pop" into both the confetti and the knockout punch. May he rest in peace.

[Carrie Brownstein is a writer and musician. She was a member of the critically acclaimed rock band Sleater-Kinney. Her writing has appeared in 'The New York Times,' 'The Believer,' 'Pitchfork,' and various book anthologies on music and culture.]