How does quiet and cool come off as impassioned? One might ask lo-fi duo Old Fashioned Bleeding Hearts (a band we stumbled upon at Baby’s All Right in February), who offer up a cool blend of subdued, almost shy instrumentals, with hushed, yet incredibly heartfelt vocal harmonies, injected with very unabashed emotionality. Colton Tracy’s delicate guitar is almost completely self-aware, melding into Trevor Tattan’s drums patterns; the one being struck in the exact same timbre as the other. Delicate picking and calm strumming lovingly coats and caresses the light hits of snare drum, or the pitter of hi-hat, all creating a foundation on which the two vocalists can find footing, and soothe one another, and consequently, the audience. The instruments play as though they’re peeking out from behind a curtain, until they flourish into lushly strummed chords, and the stage is set for the main attraction of vocal tranquility. – JP Basileo

Even though The Teen Age‘s recently released EP ‘Bad Seed’ was written as an “ode to growing older,” single “Backwards” feels emotionally rooted in the now. Under the production eye of Jason Finkel at Converse Rubber Tracks studios, the band makes the most out of immediately catchy guitar riffs and a joyously propulsive rhythm. While the verses may bring to mind early days of The Strokes, the chorus serves to elevate the track into an instant classic.  With its pairing of a guitar line melody with the vocal hook “I don’t want to live without you – I just keep on falling backwards,” the song is bound to woo fans of the heart-tugging surf-pop of Beach Fossils. This week the garagey quartet is playing two consecutive nights at Rough Trade: the first show is tonight (03.31) with Slaves,  the second one tomorrow (4/1) with two other Deli NYC favorites Celestial Shore and Monogold. – Dave Cromwell

Portland’s Jackson Boone is the latest in a long line of Syd Barrett acolytes going back to David Bowie and Marc Bolan. Boone, in fact, works past much of Barrett’s tension en route to spaced-out oddities as dramatic and modern as they are retro. Check out single Runaway from his latest LP Natural Changes. (This blurb was featured on the latest SXSW issue of The Deli Magazine, dedicated to psychedelia)

Comprised of David Perlick-Molinari (French Horn Rebellion), Deidre Muro (Savoir Adore, Deidre & The Dark), and Derek Muro (Love Like Deloreans), Violet Sands plays a brand of atmospheric, melodic synth pop that absorbs and reorganizes in often bizarre ways influences ranging from R’n’B to hip hop. The band’s debut EP Strange Attractor is set for release on May 6th via Ensemble Records, check out below their latest single Coming Back,  and – if you dig – also the more uptempo previous single No Matter What. 

We’ve been following harpist Pamela Martinez’s project Teletextile for a while now (check out this interview from 2009), and it’s great to see good things happening for an artist that has always been pushing the envelop and trying new things. Pamela recently started performing in British songwriter Chad Valley’s band, and joined him on a tour spanning from the Philipines to Austin for SXSW, and to Europe later in the spring. Just before the tour, Teletextile released an EP entitled The Lark, accompanied by a series of videos, the first one of which we are premiering below. Expect more music and videos from this project later in 2016.

Blending the classic post-hardcore guttural screams with an epic, often tense, but always intelligible wall of distorted guitars reminiscent of shoegazer, Brooklyn emerging band DRIFTOFF (born from a rib of Boston’s Junius) comes across as brutal and ethereal at once. The band has just returned from a five week long tour that took them from New Haven’s Bar on February 10 to the Tiefgrund in Berlin on March 17, with in-between dates in NYC (Bowery Ballroom), Island, the Netherlands and Italy. Now, that sounds like a pretty awesome vacation! No local shows in sight for them at the moment.

One of the most interesting bands to emerge from the NYC artist collective The Epoch,  Felix Walworth’s brainchild Told Slant have been picking up fans one by one with their touching indie folk celebration of sadness. Their 2012 debut album ‘Still Water‘ has been a sleeper, but many found it thanks to the band’s persistence in bringing their unique live performances around the country: Walworth is a drummer and, on stage, has found a way to be also a front man, without giving up his instrument. The group has just announced the release of sophomore album ”Going By’ and an extensive tour with the Hotelier, which will end with a homecoming show at Bowery Ballroom on July 15th. Check out preview single ‘Low Hymnal" below.

Selected as our record of the month last summer, Puppy‘s "Shit in the Apple Pie" is a slacker rock gem that references the laziest of musical genres (no wonder we caught them playing pinball!) without being subdued by it. The quartet will be performing at Shea Stadium tomorrow with Caged Animals and Romp, a band we are going to write about next. Check out their song ‘Rodeo Clowns’ below.

Brooklyn sci-pop duo Glassio has just unveiled a new video for their single "Try Much Harder," which we highlighted about a month ago on this very blog. With an appropriately muted color palette perfectly matching the band’s soft sounds, the video illustrates a sci-fi trip started in the NYC subway, and ended on a tiny boat in some unspecified planet. You can catch the band live on Saturday April 9th at The Mercury Lounge at 9pm.

There was Eric B. and Rakim, BlackStar, Cannibal Ox and now We Are Not For Them; classic albums are born when certain rappers get paired with the right producers. Warren Britt is a rapper’s rapper; he’s in the front row of every show, every open mic, every cypher. Magnanimous doesn’t begin to describe his love for the culture and his MC brethren. A.M. Breakups is a prolific mega producer in the vein of El-P and Blockhead who runs the Reservoir Sound Womb, a standout Brooklyn-based label. Tha Gent is a culture clash DJ whose events bring together and stir up the best Hip Hop has to offer. Like the inimitable DELTRON, this mighty triumvirate offers the most vehement paradox: and album for you entitled We Are Not For Them. It’s a rally cry for the disenfranchised and a voice you must hear. Celebrate the release of this epic collaboration at Pandemic Gallery, Thursday April 7th at 7pm.

Garage Land is a weekly series of local and international live rock ‘n ‘roll, garage, psyche and punk acts, curated and hosted by relatively new Greenpoint venue The Good Room, which was born on the ashes of Europa. The next showcase is this coming Wednesday (03.30), and features five noisy local bands, in the order listed below (from headliner to opener). In the picture, Dead Sexy Sheila.

Williamsburg’s favorite iconoclast HEEMS is rocking a late night set tonight (3/25) at Baby’s All Right before doing “some rapping in Ramallah, Haifa, Jaffa-Tel Aviv and Tel Aviv before Beijing.” Whereas hip hop group Das Racist garnered fame through their irreverence for their genre and lot in life, HEEMS rocks harder and stronger through direct assault. Focusing his furor at the ills of a racist society, the dysfunctional government, and the irony inherent in most modern hip hop, HEEMS elevates his art from every angle, often with poppier results (as in the streaming video of 2015’s appropriately titled single ‘Pop Song’). – BrokeMc