One difficult feat of good music is its ability to transport listeners into a different and engaging world. Most New Yorkers live in cramped spaces that are often stifling; a reprieve is highly coveted. On Monogold’s debut full length, “The Softest Glow,” the trio guides listeners through multiple musical destinations. The band’s sound lies somewhere in the chaotic and unlikely intersection between Yeasayer, The Antlers and Animal Collective. As a three-piece band, Monogold can support catchy songs that extend beyond confined spaces or genres. Keith Kelly’s falsetto flirtatiously glides through twinkling keys in the album’s starting track, “Ivory Teeth Golden Tusk,” a cherubic welcome to the trio’s sensational, epic voyage through “The Softest Glow.” The energy of the album is raw — almost animalistic — in the sense that the direction of the songs appears to be driven by mood and spontaneity. This speaks of the band’s capability to play together very well, feeding off each other’s strengths and collectively moving as one. The tribalesque, frenetic rhythms feel exotic but ground the different sounds and textures. The album is an impressive debut that feels both foreign and familiar at the same time. Get out of your cramped quarters and witness Monogold’s teleportation skills at Pianos tonight for free! – Nancy Chow

American folk music has long been about a splattering of influences re-arranged. The best of the current crop of songwriters is that they smartly merge the ongoing progression of rock and popular music with rootsy inflections, while claiming no title other than their own. Gabriel Birnbaum’s brainchild Boy Without God is a strong example of this process. The formerly lo-fi centric songwriter proves that he doesn’t need grit to add novelty or cover deficiencies in his recently released album “God Bless The Hunger.” While his adept guitar work draws heavily from the bass-melody sounds present since Maybelle Carter, Birnbaum’s keen sense of layering shifts quickly from strings to horns, from sweet harmonies to avant-garde dissonance. Check out “Boy Without God” on July 31st at The Rock Shop in Brooklyn. – Jason Bertone

‪Seapony’s debut full length, Go With Me, is out now on Hardly Art. This week they play a pair of shows in NYC and also unveiled a brand new video for "Where We Go." ‬

The music of Seapony is refreshing in its simplicity. Most songs on Go With Me use no more than three chords, with an average running time around two-and-a-half minutes. In lieu of a human drummer, the Seattle trio entrusts time-keeping to a vintage gizmo the size of a desktop calculator. The lyrics to "Dreaming," the track that catapulted them into the spotlight, are just six lines long. Like Young Marble Giants and Beat Happening before them, this young three-piece has generated excitement that belies their music’s modest means. And their back story is just as no-nonsense.

Seapony is songwriter Danny Rowland, singer Jen Weidl, and bass player Ian Brewer. Danny and Ian grew up and made music together in Oklahoma. In 2001, they moved to Olympia, WA. In 2004, Danny visited Cincinnati, missed his flight home, and ended up staying in Ohio for four years; he met Jen during his Buckeye State sojourn. After a period of work and study in Lawrence, KS, the happy couple came west in 2010 and were reunited with Ian in Seattle. Seapony was born.

Gentle Brooklyn lo-fi-shoegaze-poppers Dream Diary just released this home made video of their single "El Lissitzky", the band recently released their debut CD, "You Are The Beat" on Kanine records.

–Photo by Adrie Smith

I first heard Margot MacDonald singing entirely by accident. I was walking through the Reston Town Center during one festival or another – who can keep track of how many festivals are held there? In the distance, I heard the familiar heartbeat rhythm from my days of programming computers while listening to Massive Attack records on headphones. Someone was covering "Teardrop" in a semi-a-capella fashion, apparently with the aid of some digital loops. I pushed through crowds of suburbanites to work my way closer to the heartbeat. When I finally found the makeshift stage setup, I was surprised to find a petite red-headed teenage girl absolutely wailing the lyrics by herself in perfect harmony with her own voice, which was pulsing through the loop pedal on the ground. There were at least three photographers with expensive, telephoto rigs photographing her performance as if this Reston festival were Lollapalooza.

I’ve found this to be the curious paradox of Margot MacDonald. On one hand, she has been massively successful in her music career, especially considering she is only 19 years old. She began singing with the Washington National Opera when she was 10 and was recording her first album with a Grammy-nominated producer by age 12. She was the 2010 Washington Area Music Award "Artist of the Year", her seventh "Wammie" award to date. And yet, to my knowledge, as of this publication, she is yet unsigned.

To be fair, MacDonald wasn’t interviewed for this piece, and maybe she isn’t looking to be signed right now. To be even fairer, she is extensively involved with non-profit organizations and is constantly playing out at these local festivals and seems nothing short of thrilled to do so. And to be beyond fair, she has graced stages no less prestigious than the 9:30 Club and even the Kennedy Center itself and doesn’t have a thing left to prove to anybody. But, honestly, it’s hard to hear a voice so refined, so bold, so versatile, and so fresh being showcased at a quaint, town festival and not have that old "Piano Man" thought, "Girl, what are you doin’ here?"

I feel like I’m sounding negative, so let me clarify my stance: Margot MacDonald is an absolutely bad-ass singer. And I am nothing if not a sucker for her obsession with (and mastery of) the loop pedal she’s become so associated with. And, I love that I can find her singing her heart out at a cute little festival just as hard as she would on a huge stage. She writes great original songs and has an arsenal of unique, gutsy covers, like Imogen Heap’s "Just for Now." To me, the detached observer, it seems like you can almost see her true artistic soul and edginess in the way she plays those cover songs than even in her own original music. But, there’s no doubt that her original songwriting is moving rapidly in a direction that is unmistakably her own and in a direction that really highlights her unstoppably strong voice that seemingly is unbounded by range limitations.

Margot is definitely an artist to watch, and I suspect we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg that is her music career. And, speaking of watching her, why not check her out while she’s still playing local festivals? Her next appearance is Friday, July 15, at the Wheaton TGIF Series.

–Jarrett

Radical Dads was founded in 2008 along the banks of the (famously polluted) Gowanus Canal. Lindsay Baker sings and plays the guitar. Robbie Guertin (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah) sings and plays the drums. Chris Diken plays the guitar and does not sing. The band released its self-titled EP in May 2009 and the Recklessness 7-inch in December 2010. Their first full-length album, "Mega Rama", was released today by Uninhabitable Mansions, an art collective and record label based in Brooklyn, NY. Radical Dads’ interests include disaster, piracy, land use, feedback, distortion, and feedback-laced distortion, and probably even doing silly things – which is the main theme in their latest video below. – Read Mike Levine’s interview with the band here.

At 23 years old, Michigan born Alex Winston has already been featured in a Hyundai commercial, toured the world and released a couple of critically acclaimed recordings (she’s currently on an extended European tour). With this year’s beat-driven EP "Sister Wife" (which was Deli CD of the Month in February), Winston is exploring very different territory from her past two releases. With New York producers The Knocks taking the helm this time around, coupling their beat-making genius with Winston’s operatic soprano, Alex sounds like we might see her tour with Janelle Monae in a couple years. Whereas, just last year on her Basement Covers album we got a Jon Brion-inspired EP filled with her imaginative takes on classics from The Rolling Stones’ "Play with Fire" to Mumford & Sons’ "Cave." She’s come a long way in a short time, and it’ll be fun to keep an ear to this artist and see what happens next. – Read Mike Levine’s interview with Alex here.

Remember the Vuvuzelas? Their constant trumpety drone made them (in)famous in South Africa during the 2010 Soccer World Cup. Well, it looks like since then somebody has been working in the dark to clear their name… Saturday night at 285 Kent, BKLYN from 8pm till PARTY is the "Viva La Vuvuzela!" Music Fest, bringing out "an explosion of eclectic sounds from Brooklyn to Bangalore." The lineup features a spread of Afro-influenced music, including Nomsa Mazwai (winner of South African Music Awards), international world music collective Osekre & the Lucky Bastards (picture above), and Shinobi Ninja (video below), whose power-reggae will surely make you bang your head in a metal-inspired rasta sort of way. The event is nine acts long, fully charged, and gives attendees first pick at a few free downloads. See you at VIVA! – Caitlin Clive

Coming in at number 26 on the Deli’s Best New Emerging Artists of 2010 poll (the full results can be seen here) Ridgewood, New Jersey based Big Troubles is comprised of Alex Craig and Ian Drennan, friends from high school, and Luka Usmiani and Samuel Franklin. Craig went to college in New York (where he met Franklin, the two had a class together), Drennan in Boston, and the two decided to record last summer after losing touch for a while. Talking about the interest focused on music from their county (Bergen County), Drennan says, “[Big Troubles] sort of tries to counter that by maybe not playing into what’s understood to be the ‘New Jersey sound." Despite this counter, Craig says that living in New York was a “soul-crushing, horrible experience” and that he would much rather live in Ridgewood. Big Troubles’ music is filled with references to 80’s synth pop and 90’s shoegaze, and Craig admits that it was almost a bonding experience, the two of them getting into the same music together. Their debut, Worry (full listening is enabled here), has vaguely hazy production skills but still manages to blow listeners away with their catchy tunes.
The band will be releasing of a new album in late August and is just announced a tour in support of Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Check out the tune from the upcoming album entitled "Misery" – some kind of shoegazer-pop song with Smashing Pumpkins and The Jesus and Mary Chain influences.

Mp3: Big Troubles – Misery