1. tUnE-yArDs BiRd-BrAiNs Experimental musician Merrill Garbus’s fantastic debut release gets a wider release. Get Ray Davies’s take on a track from it here and listen here.

2. Rakim The Seventh Seal The golden-era rap godfather releases his first new album in a decade. Read our review here.

3. Them Crooked Vultures Them Crooked Vultures The supergroup finally puts out its anticipated debut. Read our story on the band’s recent New York show here and here, and hear a few songs here.

4. Norah Jones The Fall She’s pretty and so is her voice. Listen here.

5. Real Estate Real Estate The New Jersey buzz band puts out a debut to match the hype.

Check Largehearted Boy for more.

This past May, a two disc compilation-mixtape, A Bugged Out Mix, landed stateside courtesy of British electro group Hot Chip. There was only one original song, “Take It In” (listen to it after the jump). Now, Hot Chip has a longer, remastered version of the song on the Interwebs. It’s the first single from the dance-heavy troupe’s forthcoming full-length, One Life Stand, which is out February 9. The song does what the band does best, combining a balladesque croon with a pulsating beat. It’s clubbing with a conscience. We’ve heard it before on Hot Chip tracks like “You Ride, We Ride, In My Ride,” “Colours,” and “Wrestlers,” but “Take It In” manages to sound vital and fresh. Take it in:

Click through for the original version…

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1. Githead Landing Colin Newman of Wire leads this group for its third full-length.

2. Wyclef Jean From the Hut, to the Projects, to the Mansion Wyclef releases his first solo record in three years. Listen here.

3. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Xenophanes The man from the Mars Volta puts out another one in a surprisingly long line of solo releases. Listen here.

4. Tori Amos Midwinter Graces Ms. Amos releases a holiday record. You read that correctly.

5. Wale Attention: Deficit We were slightly disappointed by Wale’s proper debut (read our review here), but at least it’s not the new 50 Cent (also out today), right?

For more, check Largehearted Boy.

1. Julian Casablancas Phrazes for the Young The Strokes frontman unexpectedly issues one of the best records of the year. Read our review here and listen here.

2. Say Anything Say Anything The uncommonly innovative emo-punk outfit gets boldly optimistic. Read our recent feature on the group here and listen here.

3. The King Khan & BBQ Show Invisible Girl The raw energy of a Khan show gets captured on disc yet again.

4. Cold Cave Love Comes Close A wider release comes for a synth-heavy buzz band. Listen here.

5. Weezer Raditude Will Weezer start to measure up to its first years anytime soon? If the Rainn Wilson–penned title of this record is any indication, no. But, hey, we’ll take a listen.

For more releases, see Largehearted Boy.

Called “an emblematic band for the 29th CMJ Music Marathon” by Jon Pareles of The New York Times in his festival wrap-up, West Palm Beach’s Surfer Blood is steadily rising to the top of a big ol’ pile of hype.

I didn’t catch them at CMJ, but the quartet’s upcoming debut, Astro Coast, is here on my desk. It’s full of catchy indie rock that’s lined with surf, light reverb and hooky guitars. The record doesn’t get Best New Music-ed by Pitchfork till January so check out “Swim” below and see them on Friday, November 13, with Art Brut at Brooklyn Bowl. And then brag to your friends about how cool and on top of shit you are.

The King Khan & BBQ Show

Friday

1. The Wingdale Community Singers at Issue Project Room

Everyone in the band writes and sings in this real community quartet. Read our show preview on the Americana-plus troupe here.

2. It Came from Brooklyn with Yeasayer at the Guggenheim Museum

One of the best bands in the biz gets experimental in the right place: the Guggenheim. Read more about the museum’s new music series here.

3. Future of the Left at Music Hall of Williamsburg

The Welsh band that was founded after Mclusky dissolved makes some noise.

Saturday

1. Mount Eerie at Market Hotel

Planning an offbeat Halloween? Try Phil Elverum’s sometimes haunting sounds on for size. Read our review of his most recent record here. (Mount Eerie also plays Sunday at (Le) Poisson Rouge.)

2. The King Khan & BBQ Show at the Bell House

If partying tonight is more your speed, then this is the place to be, as King Khan always makes it wild and weird. The band also plays Friday at Bowery Ballroom.

3. Deer Tick at Brooklyn Bowl

And for the costume wearers, a costume performance: The Americana band takes on British punks with Nevermind the Sex Pistols, Here’s the Deer Ticks.

Sunday

1. The Ghost of a Saber Toothed Tiger + Doveman + Julianna Barwick at Mercury Lounge

Sean Lennon’s new project with his model girlfriend headlines a stacked bill.

2. Fang Records Night at Barbès

The two-decades-old NYC label Fang, a haven for a variety of eccentric songsmiths, shows off its roster in Park Slope.

3. Dysrhythmia + STATS at Union Pool

Dysrhythmia plays heavy prog with support from the math-rock of STATS (and Music staffer Hank Shteamer’s drumming.)

1. Devendra Banhart What Will We Be Freak folk’s pope has his major-label debut.

2. Tegan and Sara Sainthood A sixth record from the Quin twins is highlighted by the fact that they wrote the songs together. Listen here and read TONY’s interview with Tegan here.

3. Wolfmother Cosmic Egg The Australians release a roaring and explosive psychedelic effort.

4. The Swell Season Strict Joy The duo from Once puts out its first album since that film’s release. Listen here.

5. Gov’t Mule By a Thread The jam mainstays, an Allman Brothers offshoot, manage to put together a surprisingly effective studio record. Listen here.

For more, head to Largehearted Boy.

Photographs by Taso Hountas

The last couple nights of CMJ were real bummers on the weather front; it seemed destiny that my last show of the fest was courtesy of a band called Rain Machine. First up was Sharon van Etten, though, and her voice pierced through the Bowery Ballroom crowd just as it did when she played our offices a few months ago. Fresh off of a tour with Great Lake Swimmers and back on another with Rain Machine, this local gal is well on her way to winning new fans all over the country.

Rain Machine performed after Van Etten, and it was good to see that Kyp Malone’s Afro and beard are back in unruly condition. The band has a bit of a wild nature, too—especially when compared with Malone’s main gig, TV on the Radio, a group that has polished its sound (arguably overly so) in the past few years. Rain Machine’s songs aren’t quite up to the TVOTR standard—a level at which Malone will unfortunately never cease to be measured—but watching the band makes you appreciate Kyp Malone’s skills and distinct voice. When the rest of the group left the stage and Malone stood alone with his guitar (singing and talking about a long, rambling song that doesn’t appear on the new Rain Machine album), it was impossible not to think that he was a little crazy, but more impossible not to want to hear more.

Note: The photos above include Rain Machine, Sharon van Etten, Imaad Wasif, Threes and Nines, and Stricken City.

The DFA showcase last night was a scene, as expected. The line was long, the hip kids were clad in cool gear and then sweated right through it, dancing. Yacht (read more on the project here) was the de facto headliner and played to a crowd that, little by little, became captivated by its electro act. I say act because singers Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans are a well-oiled machine, kicking out theatrical dance moves and background changes as well as any Broadway production. The last song of the night really got the audience jumping. Here’s live video of “Psychic City”:

After Yacht, DFA don James Murphy and Pat Mahoney spun some discs as Special Disco Version. The duo, typical of recent performances, spun a lot of classic soul and funk in the vein of their FabricLive.36 release. The cool kids…they dug it a lot.

Click through for a couple shots of the famous DJs…

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The thing about Drink Up Buttercup is that it revels in madness. Jumping around at Cake Shop last night, the Philly band felt like an integral part of the audience, and vice versa (which is an admittedly easier task to achieve at a club where the stage is part of the floor). Its music is psychedelic, anthemic and loose. Recordings do not do justice to the quartet’s live act, but all the same, here’s Drink Up Buttercup’s first single on Yep Roc, “Even Think”:

Throughout the set, the group tore at the Christmas lights on the ceiling, banged the walls, the ground, whatever… But toward the end of the performance, the revelry came to a halt when a member paused to take a photo of the audience, which he said he was going to tweet then and there. Sure, all sorts of questions come to mind about whether or not audience members can pay full attention to a group while on Twitter or Facebook, but this was a new one for me. Perhaps it’s not that big of a deal, but it—quite strikingly and poignantly—made me long for a time without cell phones, digital cameras and iPhones at concerts. How can the audience be expected to be fully engaged when the band may not be?

(By the way, make sure to follow me on Twitter for CMJ updates!)

Click through for a cool widget where you can download both sides of Drink Up Buttercup’s new single, and see the rest of the band’s CMJ schedule and beyond.

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It’s no secret that we’ve been fans of Sian Alice Ahern and her band for some time. Jay Ruttenberg wrote a feature on the group early in 2008, and since then, the troupe has been on our top shows of the year list, had an album reviewed…

So you won’t be surprised to hear—from this source—that the Londoners killed it last night at the Knitting Factory Brooklyn. The Group headlined the Social Registry and No Quarter showcase (the rest of which was written about by Hank Shteamer here) and was just about perfect. The balance of Ahern’s sublime, otherworldly vocals with the stellar keyboard parts and subtle drumming was chillingly good, as were all of the accents. A trumpet piping in here, a backup singing bit there—it was all so well thought out and so well executed. Proving that what the members can accomplish on record they can do live, Sian Alice Group made a statement last night as one of the most underrated bands in the world.

Click past the jump for more fabulous photos from Kent Miller…

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Last night at Cake Shop, the California duo known as Best Coast began its performance by saying, “Tonight our drummer is a MiniDisc player. It’s a lot cheaper than the real thing.” Bethany Cosentino and Bob Bruno’s performance didn’t suffer, though, and Best Coast breezed through a lo-fi set full of stoned, surf buzzes and fuzzes.

Check out a recent tune by the group, “Sun Was High (So Was I),” which is set to clips from the 1966 French film A Man and a Woman:

Editor’s note: We received a complaint last week that our weekly release wrap-up doesn’t include jazz releases. For better or for worse, this list is one person’s impression of what’s important on the (mostly) pop, rock and hip-hop release landscape. Please continue to recommend other releases via the comments.

1. Fuck Buttons Tarot Sport The British electronic duo releases another brilliant collection of songs.

2. Sufjan Stevens The BQE The extremely talented musician releases his semiclassical opus about the expressway. Read a recent show preview on him here, and listen here.

3. Clare and the Reasons Arrow Local couple Clare and Olivier Manchon make orchestral pop sound intimate but not small. Read our preview on the group’s CMJ show here and listen here.

4. Atlas Sound Logos Bradford Cox continues to be almost endlessly prolific with another effort from this non-Deerhunter project.

5. Alec Ounsworth Mo Beauty The Clap Your Hands Say Yeah frontman releases a solo debut.

For the rest of this week’s output, head to Largehearted Boy.

Photographs by Diana Sonis

As we wrote about in our preview of the Sunset Rubdown show at the Grand Ballroom Friday, Spencer Krug and his group have taken a sharp turn toward the epic. The band’s live performance proved it, hinging on soaring, intertwining melodies full of layered instrumentation. Krug’s voice is an acquired taste, but much of the crowd in the large room were big fans of his croon—and Sunset Rubdown, in general—mouthing the odd lyrics along with the singer. One particular concertgoer was so excited, he ran across the stage, dropping his phone. Krug picked it up and the man came back on, grabbing the phone and giving the bandleader a tight hug.

A month ago, we talked to the leader of the Flaming Lips, Wayne Coyne, about the band’s appearance at ATP New York and its upcoming record, Embryonic. The excellent disc hit stores yesterday, so we thought it would be appropriate to post some of Coyne’s (very) expansive ruminations on the new effort.

Do you see Embryonic as more rock than maybe pop?

Totally, yeah. There’s definitely an element of us, for lack of a better word, sort of playing with what we thought seemed like pop-ish music. I don’t know if we’re ever going to be thought of as a pop group, but [we're] definitely playing with pop elements a lot. This one I don’t think really does that. I mean, there may be a couple of songs that fall into some element of structure, but a lot of it is just more groove-oriented.

Read more after the jump…

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1. The Flaming Lips, Embryonic The Lips put out a weird, scuzzy new one that is reminiscent of some pre–Soft Bulletin material. Read what Wayne Coyne had to say about the record in our in conversation with him here.

2. Fanfarlo, Reservoir The three-year-old London pop combo defends its “next big thing” status with this effort. Read our preview on the band’s upcoming CMJ set here.

3. Bob Dylan, Christmas in the Heart The rumors are true: Dylan made a Christmas record. And it’s out today.

4. Thomas Function, In the Valley of Sickness Excellent punk ‘n’ garage comes out of the South, courtesy of this quartet from Alabama.

5. Bowling for Soup, Sorry for Partyin’ We are only recommending BFS’s latest for two reasons: the album’s name and its cover art.

For more on today’s releases, head to Largehearted Boy.

1. The Very Best Warm Heart of Africa The unlikely world pop trio releases its debut after a much-lauded mixtape. Read our recent feature on the group here.

2. Built to Spill There Is No Enemy For the Boise, Idaho, band’s seventh full-length, patience is a virtue. Read our review here.

3. Roseanne Cash The List The songsmith performs tunes curated by her dad. Read our recent feature here and listen here.

4. Gossip Music for Men Beth Ditto’s diva vocals come to fore courtesy of one Rick Rubin. Read our review here and listen here.

5 . The Mountain Goats Life of the World to Come John Darnielle goes for big number 17 on the studio-release count. Wow. Listen here.

Honorable mention: Mission of Burma The Sound the Speed the Light On the other side of the coin, MoB releases its fourth full-length in its almost-30-year career. Listen here.

Check Largehearted Boy for more.

Beloved local world-pop preppies Vampire Weekend have a new record, titled Contra, which comes out in January of next year. The band has put out of a new track, “Horchata,” full of much of what we’d expect from them: cultural references (we also enjoy horchata!), African percussion, string accompaniments and…wait, was that a fart joke?

One thing that is noticeably absent from the song is, for lack of a better term, catchiness. It’s just not very hooky or memorable—this coming from the crafters of never-leave-your-head tunes like “M79″ and “A-Punk.” We’d say Contra is beginning to smell of sophomore slump, but it’s too early to tell. Maybe they just ate a bunch of Mexican food this summer.

Download the track here.

1. Ghostface Killah Ghostdini: Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City The most enduring member of the Wu-Tang Clan raps about love. Read our review here.

2. Anti-Pop Consortium Fluorescent Black The esteemed alt-hip-hop collective stages a studio comeback. Read our review here and watch two APC members perform at TONY here.

3. The Avett Brothers I and Love and You Rootsy, spare and emotional anthems fill this disc from the fast-risers from North Carolina. Listen here.

4. Karen O and the Kids Where the Wild Things Are Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman O handles the tunes behind Spike Jonze’s new flick. Listen here.

5. Princeton Cocoon of Love The Southern California group plays warm, worldly pop that calls to mind the Talking Heads crossed with Jonathan Richman. Listen here.

For more releases, check Largehearted Boy.

One of the better acts I caught at the Monolith Festival in Colorado a couple weeks ago was Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros. There were about a gazillion people onstage at his show, but together they created a blissful cacophony that somewhat resembled Devendra Banhart crossed with Rusted Root.

Here’s an unreleased track, “Hei Hai” which was performed live in L.A. and features a tearjerker around the 4:30 mark:

Bonus: Click through for the band’s video for “Home” off its debut album…

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