Awesome...

John Legend and The Roots cover "Wake Up"
"Wake Up" is a song by the Arcade Fire and was included on 2004's Funeral. An acoustic version was also used in the trailers for Where the Wild Things Are. John Legend and The Roots's recent album, Wake Up, is apparently named after the song (even though there's another song on the album with "wake up" in the title), but their recording of the song had not been released with the album. Their version is mostly faithful to the original song, adding a funky interlude after the second verse. It's a beautiful recording.


Everyone covers The xx
I guess The xx is just one of those bands that everyone loves. Just in the past few days, covers by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) and Gorillaz have been posted. OMD covered "VCR" and Gorillaz covered "Crystallized." Both bands added their own unique sound to the songs.

OMD - "VCR"


Gorillaz - "Crystallized"

Music videos from King Khan & BBQ Show and Here We Go Magic (bands separated by the "and")
A couple of new music videos this week. The first is from King Khan & BBQ Show for the song "Invisible Girl." If you haven't heard of the band, their sound has an old-school rock and roll sound to it, very basic and very stripped down...nothing fancy. The video features trippy underwater puppet action and a bird with a bad case of diarrhea.


The second video is from indie rock band Here We Go Magic, who themselves have a somewhat ambient/dream-pop sound. The video is a bit (a lot) graphic, especially towards the end, plus there's some male nudity to go along with it, so be careful where you watch it (in others words, NSFW).


Atlas Sound releases home recordings
This week, Atlas Sound (Bradford Cox of Deerhunter) released four home-recorded albums, named Bedroom Databank Vol. 1-4, for free through Mediafire. They extend the ambient/shoegaze/experimental sound present in his previous work. My favorite has been #3 and, specifically, "Mona Lisa," which sounds a bit like something Girls would put out. Unfortunately, Sony has removed all but the first album, citing copyright infringement. I'm sure there are some mirrors already out there and I would keep an eye over at his blog for any updates regarding the recordings.

Well, for now, here's the first: Bedroom Databank Vol. 1