“Think of Icky Blossoms as a Human League for a new generation, with a little more beat and a lot more nasty”said The Washington Post, and as one-line descriptions go, that’s not a bad introduction.

Omaha trio ICKY BLOSSOMS see the UK release of their debut self-titled album through Saddle Creek records on June 3rd 2013. That seal of approval, combined with a pedigree from the likes of Tilly and the Wall and an album produced by TV on the Radio’s David Sitek, should provide a sense that this is a band to pay attention to. A listen to the throbbing electronics & lush romance of single ‘Heat Lightning’ will prove it.

“Swaggering but never cocky, the band mix electronic pulses with big choruses, coming off like an early incarnation of Kasabian with added attitude.” - [Clash Magazine]

“Bibelots have a fantastic swagger and grandeur to their sound. An array of electronics gives an exciting depth and character to their well thought through blend of The Stone Roses and contemporary British rock.” - [Q Magazine]

London-based indie/electronic band BIBELOTS (pr. Be-Belows) release their new EP 'Devil’s Highway’ on Monday 3rd June 2013.

"A welcome introduction to someone who looks set to be one of the more interesting new acts of the moment." - Indie London

"Finally! A good song by Mutada Pintado..." - Patrick Wimberly Chairlift

Mutado Pintado - aka Cape Cod/NYC transplant Craig Louis Higgins Jr. - is returning on May 27th with 'Blue', the eagerly awaited follow-up to last year's 'Carbon Copies'/'This Life'. Signed to Bucks Music publishing and part of the band Black Daniel whom recently had their single “Gimmie What You Got” featured on the motion picture soundtrack Magic Mike (2012, Steven Soderberg) and toured with Kasabian and Bryan Adams, Mutado Pintado has once again joined forces with producer MatthewDayOne to deliver one more single before his debut album to be released this year.

Spaced-out dreamers Tripwires have unveiled their latest single ‘Shimmer’.

Released on 10th June, the soaring track is taken from the bands’ debut album Spacehopper, released on 17th June through Frenchkiss Records (Bloc Party, The Antlers, Local Natives). Produced by Nicholas Verhnes (Animal Collective, Deerhunter), Spacehopper hovers in the stratosphere between pedal-pushing shoegaze pop and pressure-cooked psychedelia.

‘Midnight Mayfair’ is the debut album by The Body Rampant.

The first song starts with the character of the story laying in the forest, dreaming of what will later be determined as his death. By the time the first song ends, the character's heart has stopped beating and his brain has entered a hallucinogenic state where he appears to go through many visual and mental encounters. Each song can be represented as a memory or story from past years of his life, mixed in with scary monsters and colorful twists that he cannot explain (hence his post death brain synapse). Mayfair, being a fictional town that he created in his head during this disillusioned state, seems to be quite the scary and questionable place, but he cannot seem to get away, nor does he want to. Midnight is the time of day when the creatures start to come out and make things weird and uncomfortable for the character while he is trying to put the broken pieces of his life together in his head.

After unveiling new single ‘After The Afterlife’ last week, CocoRosie, the sisters Sierra and Bianca Casady, follow it with a surreal new clip.

“It was exciting to be given so much creative space when working with CocoRosie,” says director Mike Basich. “It was a special project filming it in a place where the girls grew up in their younger years; adventuring through nature, dreaming of other lives in the land of Hawaii.”

Bianca describes the inspiration for the video as: “Nature, magic, ritual, fun.... There were no narrative ideas for the video un-like our other attempts, we just knew we wanted to document a true adventure and see what happens.”

“The smells [of Hawaii] take me back to early childhood. I feel a strange sense of home on the land. I walk barefoot. I love how the rain comes and goes all night and day.”

Wilder was the second and final album by The Teardrop Explodes, originally released in November 1981 and a radical, post-punk classic that’s ripe for reappraisal. Ambitious, colourful and catchy and with more ideas at play than most groups could conjure up in a lifetime, like so many great albums, it simply confused people in its audacity.

At the start of the year, ‘Reward’ had given the Teardrops their only Top Ten hit but amidst all the publicity that always surrounded the group, Wilder reached only a disappointing 29 in the charts. The first extracted single ‘Passionate Friend’, despite two appearances on Top of the Pops, barely scraped into the Top 30. Within a year of Wilder’s release, the group had split up.

‘Serious talent and vision’ NPR
‘Samaris specialise in gorgeous, haunting nocturnes’ Drowned In Sound
‘..unlike much else you’ll hear coming out of Iceland right now.’ The Line Of Best Fit

Icelandic teenage wunderkind Samaris’ first UK release comes in the shape of an eponymously-titled album on 29th July. Samaris compiles their two Icelandic-released EPs, Hljóma Þú (2011) and Stofnar falla (recorded at Sigur Rós’ Sundlaugin studio with Gunnar Tynes of múm, 2012) and includes 4 remixes as detailed below.

The four-piece put out a couple of tracks last year in the forms of 'Fever' and 'Slow Train', the latter recorded with Paul Savage (Franz Ferdinand, Flaming Lips) in Glasgow, and are due to release their first official single 'Calm Now' on June 3rd.

'Slow Train' and 'Fever' led to comparisons with the likes of Fleet Foxes, Alt-J and Bombay Bicycle Club', with Flying With Anna saying of 'Slow Train' "the result is really quite excellent. Dreamy, post-rock, shoe-gazing folky loveliness".

For fans of... The Dandy Warhols, Franz Ferdinand, The Strokes
“...playfully knowing indie rock...” - Q Magazine

After the release of the critically acclaimed 2011 album Turn And Face Me, The Blood Arm return with their fourth album Infinite Nights on June 17th 2013 via RIP Ben Lee Records. Infinite Nights showcases a more mature sound after a short break and a move from their LA home to the cool avant-garde city of Berlin.