It's been a beautiful weekend here in Brooklyn. I hope it was nice elsewhere and that you all had the chance to enjoy it. Feeling the first stirrings of summer is always wonderful, and so are these six tunes in our latest Weekly Roundup.
–The Rocketboys are an Austin-based band with a new album Build Anyway due out June 5th. One of the lead singles is called "Bloodless," and it's an epic indie rock anthem. Starting with a gentle swell, it soon launches into a roar that never again really lets up. For a song that that seems to be about a lack of vitality, it certainly has a lot of heart.
-There's a film coming out called The Rock N Roll Dreams of Duncan Christopher, an independent release that has a description of "awkward comedy" which may or may not involve a kareoke showdown. I don't know much more than that, but I do know that one of the soundtrack cuts, "Help Me" by Sherree Chamberlain is really great. At first, I got a little bit of a Kimya Dawson vibe with the vocals in the verses – their tone and the storytelling flow – but Sherree is not nearly as quirky and takes things to a different place with the lovely chorus. It's enough to make me curious about the film and hearing more from Sherree.
-I'm not sure if we've ever featured a band from Estonia in the Roundup before, but we definitely are this week with the latest from The Sinclair Sinclair. It's a song called "Feel," and it certainly is rich in feeling and emotion. It's a warm yet melancholy soundscape with nocturnal drums and distant vocals. The bass pushes forward while the guitars and synths seem to pull away. It feels wistful and longing to me, but in such a good, identifiable way.
-A name like The Murder Barn implies some heaviness, doesn't it? Their song "Harvest" definitely has that element to it, but it gets there slowly. It's more of a haunting blues dirge in the first half with acoustic guitar and vocals carrying things along before the distortion eventually kicks in. Powerful in either mode, the particularly engrossing performance is singer Chesca's vocals. This is part of a double A-side single due out June 11th.
–EndAnd are doing something interesting in putting out a pair of EPs, with one being adventures in hi-fi and the other lo-fi. Also, these adventures are in space. I am quite taken with the opening track of Adventures of Hi-Fi in Space, "Far in Between." It rocks hard and has big hooks, along the lines of a band like the Pixies for instance. Crazy energy and charm. I'm digging it. Both EPs come out on June 26th and will possibly also see release as a unified LP.
-This week's edition ends with Plushgun. The album Me.Me. comes out this Tuesday (5/15). The single "Waste Away" is quite an infectious tune. It builds momentum from the verses before a big-time chorus. The band started out purely electronic, but have started using instruments and this song finds a nice balance between the live, physical, organic performance and electronic flourishes. Whatever its exact make-up, it's a song easy to dig.