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 …

 
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.
Space and silence are important elements in music that, in the land of the Loudness War, are often eschewed in favor of lush orchestrations or walls of sound or just plain fear. On his self-titled debut this year, James Blake reopened the door for major indie releases that explored the beautifully cavernous spaces that can be found …

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 problem with so many twee pop bands, past and present, is that their frontmen always seem like they’d be horrible people to hang out with in real life.
Nobody wants to grab a beer with the dude who penned the line “in this dark room/in this bed/when you hold me like this/I feel so secure” (that’d be the Field Mice’s …

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.

With the exception of punk, no genre has been declared “dead,” been “revitalized,” or a “shell of what it was” more than hip-hop.
So take the next statement with a grain of salt:
Shabazz Palaces, a hip-hop group from Seattle led by Digable Planets’ Ishmael Butler, are reinventing hip-hop in a way that reinforces the genre as a vital, important art …