Just thought I’d drop by the ol’ KCRW Music Blog to play my latest song-of-the-minute for you. “Cindy + Me” is a new single from Brooklyn’s Caged Animals.
Built around a sample from Raymond Scott’s “Cindy Electronium” (1959), this track is just the right combination of catchy, novelty and creepy.
On Caged Animals‘ Facebook page, Vincent Caccione says, “It’s a song I wrote about stealing cars …

I love this DIY world where musicians don’t necessarily need to be signed to a traditional record label to get their music out there.
That being said, it is true that self-released projects often take longer to make their way to us.  This is the case for an EP that I’ve been listening to a great deal lately, “NE Sorrow Is Born” from Lincoln, Nebraska …

Teasing the music that is coming up on the radio is just part of the job when you’re a DJ.  It sets the stage for the listeners, letting them know what to expect in the next stretch of programming, and hopefully offers them encouragement to stick around longer.  Now that we have tools such as Twitter, we can also throw these teases out online, …

Oh, boy, time travel is going to be great.  “The new (insert band here) album doesn’t come out for six weeks?!?!  To the time machine!”  No sweat.
Sometimes being a KCRW DJ gives you the same benefit of time travel, but right in the comfort of your own space-time continuum.
For example, I received a digital submission from the band Melanoid promoting their upcoming “Jamais Vu” …

My attention is currently being held hostage by this new song by Thao & The Get Down Stay Down.
The first time I heard “Holy Roller“, the Eastern-flavored instrumentation and then the opening lyric (“I am a woman of leisure”) made me stop multitasking and just sit there and listen. Download it here and stream below.
Thao & The Get Down Stay Down – …

I’m pretty sure Chicago’s James Curd doesn’t sleep.
Every time I check in with him, he’s got some new collaboration going on (including the music collective he created called Greenskeepers) or is kicking out some new catchy dance track of his own.
In fact, he’s been at it since he was 15 years old. And, since he was underage, they had to sneak him into the …

Do you ever have a hard time describing electronic music?  I do too.  There are so many genres and subgenres, and I think people make up new ones all the time to try to describe music that doesn’t fit neatly into a pre-existing box.
Let’s skip all that for Eskmo, an Los Angeles-based music producer whose real name is Brendan Angelides.  Instead I’ll tell you …

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last couple months sitting next to a fan and trying to distract myself from the heat with music discovery.
As the CDs pile up on my kitchen table and the promo emails with album-download links clog my inbox, I often find myself skimming through mediocre to uninteresting submissions in an attempt to make something resembling a dent …

From KCRW DJ Chris Muckley:
I have to give KCRW DJ Gary Calamar credit for this one.  I was driving home from Coachella, listening to KCRW, and Gary played this song to open his show that evening.  The track starts with a phone ringing, which immediately caught my attention, and as I listened along, I found myself literally laughing out loud as I was driving.
I …

From KCRW DJ Chris Muckley:
Indie music fans may know the name John Dufilho from his bands The Deathray Davies and The Apples in Stereo.  But Dufilho has a new project, and it’s quite a collaborative effort.
“John Singer Sergeant: The Music and Words of John Dufilho” (released April 10, 2012 on Kirtland Records) brings together Dufilho’s music and a variety of different vocalists.  Featured on …