VanShe Have An Idea Of Happiness

Idea Of Happiness, the first single off Van She's forthcoming album by the same name, is available digitally today worldwide. The remix package includes edits by Jonti, Herve, SebastiAn, and What So Not.

To say that it's awesome would be a severe understatement. Taking electro and giving it a bit of sunshine, retro sheen and high gloss, Idea of Happiness is a blinding single that looks back to their past but blasts itself forward into the summer. Idea of Happiness is the sort of song you'll be singing all summer long, so you might as well get started now and download it below.

While you're trying desperately to get Idea of Happiness out of your head, Van She's new album will be released in July via Modular.

Download: Idea of Happiness (SebastiAn Remix)
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Buttonhead Bake Champion Bread

Buttonhead, a rampaging rainbow of noise-pop with a penchant for polymesmeric song structures and fractured melodies, is a multi-headed beast with one shivering b’glittered body; comprising Ross Blake, Tobias Warwick Jones, Valentina Magaletti, Eloise Goulder and Daniel John Boyle.

The group’s wildly disparate influences of tropicalia, avant pop, spacious psyche, experimental rock, yé-yé and anthemic film music have been decisively distilled into their long-awaited debut album 3D Opera Whale, to be released on London based Horse Arm this coming June 30th 2012. The digital release of the LP is slated for July 30th 2012.

The result is a powerfully uplifting and eccentric array of songs that gently hint at a kinship to bands such as Deerhoof, Stereolab, OS Mutantes, Family Fodder and the like.

Download: Champion Bread
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Zebra and Snake Together Create Healing Music

Zebra and Snake are Finnish-born Tapio (Vocals/ synths) and Matti (Bass/ Backing vocals/ synths) - two friends who've converged from very different starting blocks to unite in gloriously warm, electronic technicolour.

Shot through with shimmering, 80s electronic inflections, but with a core that's tangibly human and filled with the wide-eyed awe of stepping into the big city, Zebra and Snake's debut, Healing Music, is danceable and catchy, but with an audibly beating heart.

"It's pop but then it's healing music - that's an idea that's carried through every song" say the band. "In the background there's always something healing or comforting. The atmosphere in our music connects with that phrase; it's like a beautiful place that's happy and safe but where there are hidden tragedies."

The result of two years work - recorded in the snatches of time available at Berlin's Kaiku Studios and constantly evolving - Healing Music is both a labour of love and an impressive marker of just how far the Finnish duo have come.

Download: Money In Heaven (Kashii Remix)
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The Stanleys Are Always With You

Veterans from opposite ends of the Earth, The Stanleys are a band that started out as nothing more than a little idea. Sometimes, though, a little idea can take you all over the world. The Stanleys are a good indication of the world and times we live in.

Meeting and forming the band over Myspace, Australia's Mark Di Renzo (Gigantic) and Jamie Horsburgh collaborated with Norway's Tomas Dahl (Turbonegro), eventually hitting studios in Oslo, Paris, Perth and Sydney to track their first generation of songs.

Leading with the title-track as first their single, The Stanleys have put Always out into the world because it's as definitive, at this early stage, as anything else: straight-up classic power-pop with one eye on the girl and the other on the car. Fun music. 

This is a classic sounding tune in the truest definition of classic sounding tunes.  It's a pre-summer anthem if there ever was one and if you dig folks like Urge Overkill you'll find your summer crush starts below.

Download: Always
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Stereofunk Tunes In Radio Robotic

Stereofunk, that guy from Dresden, is back with his second attack Radio Robotic, on New York City's Coco Machete Records. Radio Robotic, features a colorful cast of guest features from TelevisionRecords' Maral Salmassi, Coco Machete's D' Secret SVC & Razor Cain as well as Stereofunk's own discovery Miu. Combine that with Stereofunk's reverence for 80s disco, original electro, retro lounge and club rockin' house music this new album takes you on a shimmering tour of synthetic nightlife through the ages. It's a whole night out packed into 50 minutes and it's a killer.

In a world of tuneless wobbles, squiggles and dirges it's nice to know that someone still appreciates the value of a good song.  Sure Radio Robotic does it all, but it keeps it within the parameters of what makes a song good.  You can unleash all the electronic mayhem in the world but if you can't remember it an hour later what's the point?  That's something that this dude from Dresden gets and that's why we love Radio Robotic.

Download: Senseless
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Mirror Talk Talks To Itself

Mirror Talk is the creative partnership of 5 disparate, culturally varied artists; a gay father, a straightedge punk kid, a Nuyorican street kid, a Jazz-fusion session player and a college professor. Together, they aim to create richly detailed, fully-earnest pop music in the chimerical, song-focused and technologically adventurous vein of their heroes; Prince, The Knife, Beyonce, and Peter Gabriel. And the voice; a singularly soulful and weightily large charismatic instrument in the tradition of the heroic frontmen of old - Bowie, Mercury, D'arby; capable of a uniquely simultaneous largeness and intimacy, while the band synthesizes choice elements of R&B, New Wave and early Electro into something truly new.

Children of the social-media age, the 5 were brought together entirely via MySpace and Facebook, and established a fast musical kinship during their college years. This kinship eventually turned itself into their debut six song Mirror Talk EP. While thoroughly entranced by the 80's the band attempts to side step the cliches and attempts to marry the future and past into a sonically anachronistic romance, against which they tell an honest story of youthful experience as diverse as the band itself.

Download: Like Magic
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Skyline Pigeons Live In A House Of Mysteries

Santa Barbara/Los Angeles, California-based Roxanne and Caroline Teti, sisters of the indie rock/psych-pop band Skyline Pigeons, are celebrating the release of their debut full-length album, House of Mysteries with the release of a couple of songs for your downloading pleasure.

House of Mysteries is an 11-track collection inspired by the traumatic and liberating experience of loss and rebirth, following the Santa Barbara wide fires that claimed their home - and all of their possessions.

You've seen it on the news. Devastation over wild fires. Displaced families, priceless family heirlooms gone, and everything people once had now ashes. We watch this from the comfort of our homes on the news, feeling bad for the faceless people we see on our TV screens, but that feeling soon dissipates as the next horrific 5 o'clock news story comes on. However, what if it wasn't just a news broadcast? What if it was your life? Your reality? And you lost everything?

Each song on House of Mysteries takes the listener inside the emotional journey of such a reality, the way one travels from room to room of a home. Skyline Pigeons are able to use each individual song to explore, uncover, and confront the hopes, scars, and fears that become buried in the human subconscious. While each song maintains independence, their essence is familiar yet fresh, the way a chapter of a book flows freely yet is bound by story—a story with songs intriguing and soul biting.

For Skyline Pigeons, music is more than just a career it's a form of therapy and a way of channeling all those emotions into something productive.

Download: Tennessee
Download: Lucid
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