In case you had any difficulty streaming Atoms For Peace’s new album AMOK on the band’s site, you can also stream it now at NPR HERE.

The Killers played in Manchester last night and brought out New Order’s Bernard Sumner to perform New Order’s song Crystal. Nice camera work.  If you want to see more of The Killers’ set, go to orezlyard‘s channel.

One of our most highly anticipated albums of 2013, Atoms For Peace’s AMOK will hit on February 25th.  You can now stream it and pre-order it HERE.  Thom Yorke, Flea, Nigel Godrich and the boys can do no wrong in our book.  Please, run amok.  We’re still keeping our fingers crossed that Santa Barbara will once again become Yorketown and the  band will return to one of Yorke’s favorite venues,  the Santa Barbara Bowl.  If they do, it’ll be the Best Concert of 2013 without one single doubt.

Except for a couple of short stints, this hasn’t been a halcyon winter for California surf-cats.  Fellow dudes and dudettes: drastic measures are called for.  We suggest checking out the duo Snowblink (Daniela Gesundheit and Dan Goldman) and doing as they counsel:  praying for surf.  Pray For Surf is the lead track off of the Toronto-via-Los Angeles duo’s cinematically sensuous sophomore album, Inner Classics.

Inner Classics has been on repeat in our jukebox for the past month and warrants your undivided attention. If you dive in, you’ll hear beautiful compositions, Gesundheit’s spectral vocals, Goldman’s perfect accompaniment on various stringed instruments and winningly-unique arrangements.  Gesundheit evidently wrote Inner Classics first on the icy shores of Lake Erie and then on the sunny shores of Malibu. The album title is taken from the traditional Chinese medicine text, “Inner Classic,” or “Huang Di Nei Jing”, written by several anonymous authors between 300 and 100 B.C.E.  You can hear each of these geographical locations and cultures in Inner Classics’ songs.

Go buy the album HERE from Arts & Crafts.  The duo will be touring in support of Zammuto shortly after this year’s SXSW, and as a prelude they are playing tonight, Feb. 18th at The Virgil for the Hot Tub with Kurt and Kristen party, with Demetri Martin, Greg Barris, and Mark Normand.

Check Pray For Surf out immediately below.  If that praying-for-surf thing works out well, then after you’ll want to check out the video of Snowblink and friends (Jason Collett and members of Bahamas) performing another of their “surf” songs, Unsurfed Waves for Canada’s Studio Q.  Superb stuff.

The lyrics to both songs follow below the video and the band’s tour schedule is at bottom.

Snowblink–Pray For Surf:

01 Pray for Surf

Pray For Surf

We stand navel-deep in the never-tired sea
in the old sea, the so-old sea
volcano-bellied, bird-headed sea!

We see her quiet bones, the bones of the sea
sink till they’re dark and starless
From the sunroom-sized whale skull to the urchin’s brailled bowl
they all will sink until they are dark and starless starless starless

And when they reach and return to us they are the beach that burns beneath us
pushing onto shore like cement being poured
we waited and we prayed it, we pray for surf

Don’t forget you’re made of earth, son
and earth is water, three parts to one – deep-dark water
you are dark, dark, deep, dark three parts to one

Don’t forget to pray for surf, son

Unsurfed Waves

“Do you carry your bullet or did it pass through?
Do we do we do we do we have some news?

Then come to California, girl, and convalesce
in the lee of the sun and all the trees he keeps as pets.”

Where’re my hills at?
I want my hill-legs back

The rod and the frightenin’ lightnin’ both were He
sent the chandeliers swinging fro and free

He could turn and turn a cyclone man was He
do we do we have some news, do we do we?

Where’re my hills at?
I want my hill-legs back

When can we look at what the glacier brought
what it dragged near a thousand miles and then forgot?

Spring is a bed – thaw is the word

Where’re my hills at?
I want my hill-legs back

A look appeared upon His face – clear as unsurfed waves

A look appeared on His face

Tour Dates:

02/18 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Virgil (Hot Tub Show)

03/01 – Oakland, CA @ The Tower (4pm doors)

03/13-16 – Austin, TX @ SXSW Music Conference

03/28 – Northampton, MA @ The Iron Horse #

03/30 – Middletown, CT @ Art House/Wesleyan University #

03/31 – Montreal, PQ @ Il Motore #

04/01 – Toronto, ON @ The Garrison #

04/03 – Grand Rapids, MI @ Ladies Literary Club #

04/04 – Evanston, IL @ SPACE #

04/05 – Iowa City, IA @ Mission Creek Festival #

04/06 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7^th Street Entry #

04/07 – Northfield, MN @ Carleton College #

04/10 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom #

04/12 – Columbus, OH @ Wexner Center #

# Zammuto

Phosphorescent’s Matthew Houck can meld heartache and weariness in song like few can.  He has repeatedly torn us down with his world-weary vocals and songs (check out Cocaine Lights and Mermaid Parade HERE).  To get a feel, check out Phosphorescent performing below (this band iteration evidently performing together for the first time ever) their soulful new song Song For Zula from their upcoming album Muchacho.  Courtesy of the Bowery Live concert series.

The Eels are back with a great sounding new album, Wonderful, Glorious.  As a result, they are making the promotional rounds and were featured today on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic.  Leader Mark Oliver Everett (“E“) has written some gems over the years, and we still remember fondly their last performance in Santa Barbara at the Lobero Theater.  Check out the performance of the title track below, and go HERE to watch/listen to their full KCRW set.

We’ve been inundated with phenomenal “folk” music vignettes recently.   While it suits our purposes to gather these three artists here, they obviously differ in significant ways.  First up is John Fullbright singing his gripping song Jericho for a Best Fit Session.  Fullbright is the Oklahoman folk-singer whose 2012 album From The Ground Up found its place on many Best Albums of 2012 lists.  Following is the multifaceted Chuck Prophet (with wife Stephanie Finch) singing The Left Hand and The Right Hand for the BBC.  Prophet was born a rocker (Green on Red), but can do it all including this folked-up version of his song about the famous Mitchell Brothers of San Francisco off of his fantastic, Frisco-centric album, Temple Beautiful.  And last in our Friday folkpendium is Son Volt‘s new Cajun-inflected song Hearts and Minds off their impending back-to-basics album Honky Tonk.  Listen as leader Jay Farrar bares his heart and and then stitches it back together with some pedal steel and fiddles.

On Valentines Day, watch the excellent XX cover Solange’s sister’s song I Miss You. That’ll do just fine for now.

Earlier today NME featured (for its Song Stories series) a video of The Smith’s Johnny Marr explaining the genesis of The Smiths’ hallmark song, Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.   Watch below as Marr plays the song “for the first time in 25 years,” on the red Gibson ES-355 on which it was written.  What could be better than watching one your guitar heroes,  Johnny Marr, explain and show you how to play one of your favorite songs of all time?  Guitar players and Smiths fans, get your swoon on below.

Check out below British upstart Jake Bugg’s persuasive performance for KCRW of his song Broken.  The video is both a preview of Bugg’s KCRW session that will be broadcast in full on February 20th and of what you’ll get if you venture down to the Ventura Theater on April 19th for Bugg’s opening set for the headlining Band of Horses (the latter highly, highly recommended–see our review of their Troubadour show last fall HERE).  We sense Bugg is a work in process still, but Broken bodes incredibly well for his works still to come.