XO Kid / Emily Reo

hey there





First up is XO KID. I am maybe a little biased because I am actually friends withe this guy in real life, but hawt dang his music is good and underrated. He makes some good ol-lo fi pop filled with distored keyboards, sampler stuuuf, and even a lil' bit of guitar here and there. Some of his stuff is more "beat-like" (and it's good too) but his songs with singing are better than his instrumentals. Best of all, his music is free!!! FREE!! download it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?c4h192ieijgwjzp


Make sure to check out "Bleach" and "The Air Was Cold but the Sun Was Hot" (my personal faves.

Next up on the agenda for today is Emily Reo

She is some gal from Orlando, Florida who (i assume alongside with that fellow playing the drums) makes some absolutely great, lo-fi, hazy, synth-filled, dreamy-dream-dream pop songs. Her music sounds a lot what a super-stripped down, "poorly recorded" Beach House would sound like. There are synth-y organs, soothing reverb lady voice, and some interesting drums and guitar too. Similar to XO Kid, her music if FREEFREE! (well sort of, her newest realease (Witch Mtn requires payment). You can download her album Minha Gatinha here on her bandcamp: http://emilyreo.bandcamp.com/album/minha-gatinha As well as a pretty awesome cover of Built to Spill's "Car".

- Alec

Smith Westerns

I hated most of my favorite bands at first. I don't know why this always happens to me, but it does. Then, I hear one song, and I'll listen to it over and over again, craving more stuff like it. Then, slowly but surely, I'll end up listening to (and liking) other songs by the band. Smith Westerns are no exception.

They're a bunch of high school kids who started out as your traditional shitty high school garage band, but then started listening to too much T-Rex and David Bowie and morphed their sound into a kind of psychedelic-garage kinda thing. They've toured and played with bands like Girls, Nobunny, and Best Coast, which should give you a better idea of what they sound like than my pathetic attempt at describing their music does. They're on tour right now (go get tickets!) and they'll be stopping in DC in April, which should be awesome.

Here's a link to their myspace, I'd recommend listening to Imagine, pt 3, which is my favorite song of theirs and probably their best (of course, it didn't appear on their album). http://www.myspace.com/smithwesterns

This'll be my last post for a couple days since I'll be out of town (although we don't really post every day anyway), so I'll throw in a couple mixes to this post.

Here's one that you ought to listen to late at night: http://8tracks.com/discretemath/oh-my-is-it-ever-late

And here's one of Daniel's that's pretty rockin' (I've got a hard copy that I play pretty much whenever I drive.) : http://8tracks.com/discretemath/fresh-ish-tunes

- Alec