I've recently been listening to a lot of less-common stuff, namely Iron & Wine, The Decemberists, Of Montreal, The Shins, and a few others (most bands are slipping my mind right now).

However, above all else, I must recommend, nay command, that you check out Vollmar. It's my friend's older brother doing a strange alt-folk thing. He's signed to Blue Sanct (a small label out of Indiana), and he's quite good. They just finished up a very small tour of Europe recently. I had heard his first release a couple years ago, when he had just finished it, but I was more of a pop-metal guy back then. Now that I'm appreciating stuff that isn't forcefed to me via MTV, I gave it another listen and I was suitably impressed. It blew my mind, quite honestly. Reminded me of Iron & Wine, but with much less polished production and vocals that vascillate between etheral and angelic and amateurish and naive. Truly intriguing stuff, in my humble opinion.

Haven't seen many shows recently, though I did get a chance to see a co-workers project The Fortunate Unhappy, which is a very psychadelic folk kind of sound, featuring some very interesting covers (they're on MySpace).

Has anyone out there heard of Minus The Bear?

My friend turned me on to them. They're from the Seattle-area and they rock. Indie with an electronic flair (yes, I realize that sounds like Postal Service, but trust me, it's not PS), and if you have a listen, you'll get what I mean.

Plus, they just have silly song titles, which I respect.

Minus the Bear, they're one of my favorites ! :thumbsup:

I don't know if I'd describe them with the electronic flair, I guess I never looked at them with that. They are a definitely laid back band and don't go looking if you want serious, introspective lyrics. If I had to compare them with similar sounding band, possibly I'd go with presidents of the united states of america, maybe.

One of my favorite songs in general (well, at least, I've been playing it like hell in the past year or so) is their tune 'absinthe party at the fly honey warehouse' - talking about the band [or americas] traveling around in europe, drinking, frolicing, and having a good time...

I have only listened to the 'highly refined pirates' album [which i recommend], I did have the menso el... one, lost that in a HD crash :/

catcha back on the flipside,
will.

I guess im an old school indie rocker mainly into the chicago and kentucky scenes

slint
squirrel bait
mogwai
tortoise
king kong
for carnation
rachel's
delta 72
june of 44
promise ring


anyone heard or like any of them?

lately ive been getting into postal service, texas is the reason, and you will know us by the trail of dead...

but it just isnt the same as it was back then.

Montreal is where it is at. Stars, metric, Broken social Scene, Feist ect...
Canada seems to be the hot bed of indie music these days.

rock on! Muse and Taking Back Sunday are two of my faves :D

I don't know anything about Muse, but I thought the Dandys were kind of the beginning of that whole indie thing because they got screwed by the man (aka their major label) and all their peers, witnessing this, decided to go indie to be safe. Or did one of my friends just make that up and convince me of it? In any case, it kind of seemed that way in "Dig!" (the documentary about them and the Brian Jonestown Massacre - also good stuff). Can somebody confirm this? /me is too lazy to research the history of indie rock.

I obviously should have read this thread a long time ago because I just discovered Sufjan Stevens - "just" as in "today" - and I'm heavily digging on his stuff.

there seems to be a lot of stuff coming out of canada recently, Rather I just decided to pay attention to recently :p


I've gotten hooked on the CBC radio 3 podcasts, features only canadian artists. They do play a variety of music, mainly sticking to the indie/new-wave/rock sort of genre. I've found new artists I like on there - abstract artform, sekoya, a couple others.
The thing is, with the podcast, after I've finished listening to it, I can't remember the names of specific songs without rescanning each of the songs for a few secs again to refresh my memory... :confused:


catcha back on the flipside,
will.

Here are a few suggestions:

Rilo Kiley
Jenny Lewis
Eames Era
The Magic Numbers
Ted Leo/Pharmacists
Arcade Fire

I might get to see a couple of the bands live in the upcoming months.

captobvious,

If you get the chance to catch Arcade Fire live, do it. They're quite impressive and put on a highly energetic show.

Liam Frost just released a new EP, very good stuff. http://www.liam-frost.co.uk/ you can stream it under "music"