Five Minute Flyer.

Phoenix - The French indie-pop band too good for their own good. Their singles became ubiquitous in 2009, and thankfully for my sanity and probably their own, they've stayed away this past year or so. Sure, Girl Talk sampled "1901" on All Day and then Phoenix frontman's wifey Sofia Coppola featured "Love Like A Sunset" in her film Somewhere. 

But really, this song above is awesome because it isn't Phoenix. Strange Talk is out of Melbourne, Australia, and they ape Phoenix HARD on this track.

Honestly, I could have very well just said this was new Phoenix, and been on my merry way knowing I had convincingly deceived every one of my 3 followers (hi Mom). 

Where would that leave them? With "Eskimo Boy," a fresh and pleasant sounding track perfect for this Bay spring breeze. Holla.

Layering the sweet, and infectious vocals of Whitney Houston's early smash "How Will I Know?" onto Robyn's likewise sweet and stellar floor filler, "Dancing On My Own," some guy who calls himself Zooash made an entirely appropriate tribute and ended up creating the best mash-up in ages. 

"Dancing In Houston" bridges generations of truly great pop music together in such a simple and beautiful way, it's disarming. You may just tear up out on that dance floor.  

Cat Power's unequaled Jukebox version of her own track "Metal Heart" from 2008.

People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives.

- Rob, "High Fidelity", by Nick Hornby

I finally caught The Horrors live at Bimbo's 365 Club in SF last week when they co-headlined two shows with The Black Angels. It was a loud, and achingly gorgeous-sounding set in a beautiful venue.

Back in England, where these decidingly throwback shoegazers are from, they're Album of the Year winners(well, NME says) and doing duets of their single "Still Life" with mega fan Florence Welch. It's about as good as you'd hope, which is close to perfection.

#glacierfreeze

what are you thinking about right NOW? miss you.

I'm thinking about how time is grace. And I'm also thinking about an iced Americano and where I'm going to get it.

Kill For Love - Chromatics