Playing on Prefix is a feature on KCRW’s Music Blog in which writers from the eclectic music site Prefix hip you to what’s coming out of their computer speakers each week.
The Pharmacy is exceptional not because they’ve done anything new, but precisely because everything they do has been done before.
Like Wave Pictures or the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, they make no excuses about mining ground that has seemingly been all but depleted, and the fact that they are still able to find gold makes them that much more …

Playing on Prefix is a feature on KCRW’s Music Blog in which writers from the eclectic music site Prefix hip you to what’s coming out of their computer speakers each week:
Under the moniker Grimes, Claire Boucher released two albums in 2010: “Halfaxa” and “Geidi Primes”.
The latter features a track titled “Grisgris” — and if you’re familiar with Afro-Caribbean or New Orleans culture, you know a gris-gris is a talisman worn around the neck to ward off evil. It’s typically a little sachet containing a few trinkets in quantities of 1, …

Playing on Prefix is a feature on KCRW’s Music Blog in which writers from the eclectic music site Prefix hip you to what’s coming out of their computer speakers each week:
Unfortunately, most attempts to describe Dreamers of the Ghetto’s sound makes the band seem like they’re going to be atrocious. A combination of John Mellencamp and U2! Kind of like an 80s version of Arcade Fire, but not overtly sad about the number of Wal-Marts in the world and with a lead singer who has a completely arena rock voice!
Although these …

Playing on Prefix is a feature on KCRW’s Music Blog in which writers from the eclectic music site Prefix hip you to what’s coming out of their computer speakers each week:
The transition from lo- to hi-fi is, at this point, a rite of passage for contemporary indie acts. Cloud Nothings, Smith Westerns, Times New Viking, and every other band that’ll fill the lower tiers of festival line-ups next summer have lured their listeners in with distortion before stripping it all away to reveal the “real” pop songs underneath.
Add Big Troubles …

Playing on Prefix is a feature on KCRW’s Music Blog in which writers from the eclectic music site Prefix hip you to what’s coming out of their computer speakers each week:
When none of us were looking, Not Not Fun became one of one of the most exciting labels out there. Once a strictly experimental label, perhaps most famously the one-time home of droners Pocahaunted (out of the ashes would later rise the decidedly non-drone Best Coast), L.A.’s Not Not Fun now releases some of the freakiest lo-fi dance music around.
When …

Recently a few interviews with Lana Del Rey (incidentally, the subject of my last Playing on Prefix) set the internet astir, with internet dudes taking other internet dudes to task re: the debatable hotness of indie buzzgals. Although the fact that these discussions took place in an almost-exclusively male vacuum isn’t exactly surprising, it’s worth noting that it adds an extra ridiculous, transgressive layer to a debate about when and how you can comment about ladies’ physical attributes and what denotes “indie womanhood.”
But the more frustrating point about the whole thing …

Playing on Prefix is a feature on KCRW’s Music Blog in which writers from the eclectic music site Prefix hip you to what’s coming out of their computer speakers each week:
There’s something almost transgressive about trying to make innovative guitar pop in 2011. The young plaid-wearing masses have mostly left the task of crafting something “new” to the pop and rap charts, with bands like Yuck, Big Troubles and Fanzine unabashedly (and, for the most part, successfully) ripping off their ’90s lo-fi heroes of choice.
Cymbals …

Playing on Prefix is a feature on KCRW’s Music Blog in which writers from the eclectic music site Prefix hip you to what’s coming out of their computer speakers each week.
When you read in The New York Times that Danish four-piece Iceage have been playing together since they were 12, it’s natural to be impressed, and not just because this aggressive punk(ish) band can paste a New York Times Style Magazine feature in their increasingly bulging press kit. More to the point, 12 is an incredibly young age …

Playing on Prefix is a feature on KCRW’s Music Blog in which writers from the eclectic music site Prefix hip you to what’s coming out of their computer speakers each week.
Like the Hollywood Golden Age starlets from whom she draws inspiration, Lana Del Rey adopted a self-styled glamorous persona in order to kickstart what promises to be a really rewarding career.
Only a few years ago, she was Lizzy Grant from Lake Placid in upstate New York, moving to the big city to start a career under the …

Playing on Prefix is a feature on KCRW’s Music Blog in which writers from the eclectic music site Prefix hip you to what’s coming out of their computer speakers each week.
Who would have thought that one of this year’s most ambitious LPs would be done by just a guy using his voice and an old organ?
But here we are with “Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I’d Hoped”, the debut LP from Wolf Parade/Sunset Rubdown/Swan Lake man Spencer Krug’s Moonface project.
As the title suggests, Krug says he didn’t intend for the album …