Artist Making Waves: Ghost Loft [electronic / dream pop / R&B]

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Los Angeles producer Danny Choi, aka Ghost Loft, has been causing serious waves in the "blogosphere" this past year for his smooth electronic blend of dream pop and R&B accompanied by his own euphoric voice and other airy vocal samples. He has released  4 original tracks and has remixed tracks by The Neighbourhood, jj, and Icky Blossoms to name a few. In fact, Jesse Rutherford of The Neighbourhood just recently remixed his first hit single "Seconds". Considering the beautiful, intimate tracks that Choi has released in the past year, his upcoming debut EP, and that his music is already getting the remix treatment from some of today's leading producers, Ghost Loft is an artist that will be hard to ignore in 2013.

Listen to Ghost Loft's most recent single "So High" along with "Seconds" and three other excellent original tracks below. Check out his SoundCloud for some great remixes and keep an eye out for his debut EP dropping later this year.

Swell Album: Kurt Vile - Wakin on a Pretty Daze [psychedelic / indie rock / indie folk]

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The psychedelic indie folk rocker Kurt Vile returns after his (also highly recommended) 2011 album Smoke Ring for My Halo with his fifth solo record, a double LP, Wakin on a Pretty Daze. Clocking in at 69 minutes, the 33-year-old Philadelphia family man offers us his brightest and most enjoyable record to date comprised of 11 extensive and contemplative songs that expand and often fold in on themselves.

Vile's previously drowned-out but always drawled voice has drifted up to the surface, front and center, to lead his hazy, multi-layered guitar work that will sometimes recall Real Estate or Woods but more often the music as a whole will remind you of his classic rock influence Neil Young and the band The War on Drugs, for which he played lead guitar from 2005-2008. Wakin on a Pretty Daze has a very laid back and wondrous feel to it; ideal for any occasion in which you want to relax, lose yourself, or just breathe easy.

This timeless album dropped today via Matador Records and you can purchase your copy here. Below you can stream the entire album via NPR. Just in case that link doesn't work for you, I've also added a couple videos for you to hear Wakin's first two singles, "Wakin on a Pretty Day" and "Never Run Away".

Artist Making Waves: S O H N [electronic soul / minimal electro pop]

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S O H N is a producer/singer/multi-instrumentalist originally from London who currently resides in Vienna, Austria. His recent move to Vienna has played a key role in his songwriting as themes of loneliness, starting over, and realization-that-things-aren't-so-bad are delicately strewn over his intricately multi-layered minimal electronic backdrop with his soulful, captivating voice and countered with his stuttering vocal sample that blends perfectly with the complex beat.

S O H N's first single "The Wheel" from his debut EP with the same name demonstrates these themes when he opens with "I died a week ago / There's nothing left / It's caught on video / The very last breath", and calms himself down at the end with the same smooth voice that has been relaxing us: "All this fuss over nothing / Reinventing the wheel / All this searching for something / That's not real".

Believe me – his lovely, addictive sound keeps rolling beyond "The Wheel". Check it out along with the newly released slow-building single "Bloodflows" and a few others below from S O H N's Soundcloud to fully experience his seductive electronic pop. You can buy the 2012 The Wheel EP here.

holaTUBE: The Last Bison - "Midnight City" (m83 cover) [indie folk / chamber music]

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With roots in Chesapeake, VA, the 7-piece "mountain-top chamber music" family band The Last Bison has just released their "debut" album Inheritance, which is gaining the critical appeal and audience they probably hoped last year's self-released Quill LP would have acquired when they were simply known as "Bison". However, after the name change they decided to rerecord (and reorder) the six strongest tracks from Quill and add five new tracks. The result is a more polished and cohesive indie folk album that is reaching many more sets of ears with the help of Republic Records and Paste Magazine and thanks to critics' comparisons to The Decemberists, Fleet Foxes, and Mumford & Sons.
In this video, shared exclusively with Paste, you can experience The Last Bison's live take on "Midnight City" by m83, in which the Virginian folk ensemble uses instruments of all sorts to completely re-imagine the hit electronic song. With Ben Hardesty's raspy howl and rhythm guitar, his father Dan's lead banjo picking, his sister Annah's chiming bells, a brooding percussion, cello and pump organ combo, and a flawless violin impressively replacing m83's synth leads you have a complex and truly unique cover song that can just about live up to the original.

Listen to the original recording of their single "Switzerland" from the self-released Quill below and buy their new debut Inheritance LP here.

Just Rolled In: iamforest - "Structures" and "Versions" [electronic / chillwave / ambient pop]

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Although most artists who have been pigeonholed as "chillwave" by music critics or fans have been trying to avoid and rid themselves of that title due to the ever-growing negative stigma it gained shortly after its birth a few years back, Vancouver's twenty-something producer Luke Hartie, who records as iamforest, proudly dubs his beat-driven ambient electronic project as just that, "chillwave". If you're not aware of what chillwave is, some of the leading pioneers include Neon Indian, Toro Y Moi, and Washed Out.

I wondered why Hartie didn't care to throw his project into that cringe-worthy (to some) genre so easily until I thought, "Maybe it's because he knows that chillwave is only really a dismissed genre title because of the gigantic wave of wannabe laptop musicians that flooded the interwebs with cookie cutter beach-ready, fuzzed out, and sample-driven tracks when the aforementioned artists met success." Luke Hartie is different from these "artists" and he knows it. His idea of chillwave is obviously, and thankfully, and bit unconventional.

While still very "chill", Hartie's music as iamforest isn't typically sample-or-fuzz-heavy, has more hard-hitting beats, incorporates his own airy vocals and smooth guitar work, and he has over ten years' experience making music with a degree in sound engineering to top it off, so unlike most of his chillwave counterparts, he knows what he's doing. If this is what chillwave has become, I won't be too quick to drop the word from my lexicon.

Listen to his outstanding single "Structures" and a song from his recent Driven Out EP, "Versions", below and buy all his music on a pay-what-you-want basis over at his Bandcamp page.

Just Rolled In: Alex Bleeker and the Freaks - "Don't Look Down" [indie folk / folk rock]

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Alex Bleeker may be best known for his role as bassist in the highly acclaimed guitar pop band Real Estate but he's got his own thing going on as bandleader of his own folky ensemble, Alex Bleeker and the Freaks. The New Jersey-born-and-raised musician is the main songwriter but brings in a large cast of "freaks", which include, but are not limited to, his friends from other Northeastern bands Big Troubles, Mountain Man, Woods, and naturally, Real Estate, to back him up in the studio as well as on the stage.

While Real Estate's sound was tightened and polished for their 2011 sophomore album Days, Bleeker and Co. seem to have done the same with their second record How Far Away, which will be released on Woodsist this May. The leading single from How Far Away is "Don't Look Down", which is a quick-rolling folk rock tune held together by a thumping bass line, jangly Real Estate-like guitars, a smooth organ, and Alex's J Mascis-like whine. Check out the single below and look out for the album this May.

holaTUBE: Beach House - "Wishes" Music Video [dream pop / indie rock]

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Beach House is one of those bands, which are very few and far between, that has managed to enhance their sound and get better as a whole from record to record. A lot of artists will turn heads on their debut just to leave them hanging or shaking a couple years later when their sophomore album sees light. In May 2012, Beach House released Bloom, one full hour of one dreamy song after another, each one gently but powerfully lifting us skyward higher than ever thanks to Victoria Legrand's mesmerizing vocals and chilling keyboards and her other half, Alex Scally's signature guitar arpeggios.

One year later, they bring us a very entertaining visual companion to one of that record's standout tracks, "Wishes", which, I may be biased in saying this, is the best music video of all time. It features my favorite troubled TV dad, Ray Wise from "Twin Peaks" on vocals, and is directed by one half of my favorite TV duo, Eric Wareheim of "Tim and Eric" fame.

Watch the action-filled, surreal video below to experience all that is great and keep going to hear Bloom's opening three tracks, "Myth", "Wild" and "Lazuli", while you're at it. Buy the record here.

p.s. Look for Eric's cameo appearance!

Swell Album: Youth Lagoon - Wondrous Bughouse [pysch-pop / experimental / dream pop]

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Wondrous Bughouse by Youth Lagoon has been receiving tons of positive reviews and is sure to be on many an end-of-the-year top albums list but that doesn't mean I can't recommend it here as well, right? Okay, good. That's what I thought.

23-year-old Trevor Powers hails from Boise, Idaho and has been making music under the Youth Lagoon moniker since 2010. His 2011 debut album, Year of Hibernation, which dealt with psychological dysphoria, was a terrific lo-fi dream pop record filled with songs that started very slow and gradually expanded and intensified. Now, with a more polished sound and production by Ben H. Allen (Animal Collective, Deerhunter, Washed Out, Fanfarlo), Powers brings us an album with big, expansive songs that often start off where those of his debut ended.

According to Powers, Wondrous Bughouse "was influenced by a fear of mortality but embracing it at the same time" and by "becoming more fascinated with the human psyche and where the spiritual meets the physical world." With these metaphysical ideas in mind, along with his meticulously excellent use of the hypnotic and celestial sounds available in today's digital universe, Allen's ability to bring fullness and grandeur to previously smaller sounding artists (see Washed Out or Deerhunter), and Powers' keen ear for developing catchy pop melodies, Youth Lagoon shoots us off into space with this multi-layered dreamy psych-pop record that makes joining Major Tom out there beyond the stars not sound like such a bad idea.

Listen to the first two amazing singles off Wondrous Bughouse below and purchase it here. Get your hands (or just ears) on Youth Lagoon's Year of Hibernation here.