Bicoastal synth-pop duo Painted Palms released their sophomore album Horizons in September, shorly after embarking in an intensive (and still ongoing) five week tour with Brooklyn like-minded band Small Black. The project’s latest effort elegantly blends conflicting ’80s electronic influences, including Soft Cell’s light pop attitude and darker tendencies reminiscent of bands like Depeche Mode and Wire. Baby’s All Right will be hosting the NYC leg of their tour on November 20. Check out their brand new video for single "Refractor."

It’s no secret that, over the last decade, nightlife in NYC has migrated east. By the late ‘90s, Brooklyn had become a new epicenter of the city’s electronic music culture, where some still argue it started over three decades back. The Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival (BEMF, scheduled for November 6th and 7th) gave definite voice to this shift when it debuted eight years ago. This year the fest’s organizers once again curate a series of shows across multiple venues in Williamsburg, involving the cutting-edge of emerging live and DJ talent. Bookings include MK, Laidback Luke, Floating Points, Eats Everything, Snakehips, Daniel Avery, Django Django, George Fitzgerald, Matrixx Mann, Luke Hess, and Soul Clap among others.

Newark’s own Nadus, a rather hard to classify electronic artist whose 2014 record, "Broke City," was recently re-released, will be one of the local artists performing at this year’s BEMF, together with – among others – Julia Govor and Gina Turner, who were featured in our latest print issue. Check out Nadus’ electro ode to his home town, streaming below, and – if that’s your cup of tea – don’t miss his show at BEMF on Friday November 6th.

We’ll be sad to say goodbye to Brooklyn dark and loud psych rock quintet Ancient Sky, a band whose dense and tense songs would be the perfect soundtrack for anybody’s weirdest nightmares. The group released three full length albums since 2012, slowly transitioning from post punk influences (we hear one of our favorite early ’80s bands – Echo and the Bunnymen – in songs like Wishing Well) to the bleaker, bluesier psycedelia of their 2015 release, entitled "Mosaic." Check out the record’s titletrack streaming below. Ancient Sky will be celebrating their last show at Shea Stadium on 11.21.

Redcast is a Portland based quartet that never fails to supply upbeat and uplifting pop rock tunes. The band released their debut EP, appropriately titled "The Look Up," just a month ago, and PDX Spotlight took notice right away, inviting them for a live taping. Check out opening track "Corduroy" below, and – if it improves your mood – keep checking their Facebook profile for upcoming live shows.

Tonight Los Globos flirts with the balm and breeze as autumn finally rolls in to Los Angeles. Three coastal dreampop outfits from the AndFam collective pack the bill: Captions travels out from Ventura to front the night with some new jams, like the most recently revealed single "Two-Step". Bokonon, a new band that started this year with the release of their eponymous debut EP, follows after just a quarter past 11. Their slowed-down synthy ballads has been heard at house shows, local venues like The Lost Knight, Lot 1 Café, and Ham & Eggs Tavern, and even out in Tijuana. The night ends with the chamber quartet Mind Monogram, who has also shared bills with Bokonon and the valley’s raucous shoegazers Draag.

This is an 18+ show with a 5$ cover that starts at 10 PM; check the event page for more info on set times. – Ryan Mo

Around since 2010, Brothertiger plays quintessential synth-pop, meaning that if Plato was still around he would tell you that the idea of "synth-pop" would sound very much like one of this band’s songs (although we don’t remember a part of his teachings where ideas would apply to musical genres…) Led by Brooklyn keyboardist John J., the project has already two LPs under its belt, and it’s gearing up to drop a new full length record, entitled "Out of Touch." But before the release, Brothertiger will be performing a high profile opening gig at Webster Hall, where he’ll be sharing the stage with  Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr – tonight November 4th.

An initial listen to recently released track “Bubblegum” from Brooklyn-based British-born musician Mark Crozer may give the impression that perky retro pop is the only intended goal. While the melody does speak to the pop canon, complete with handclap percussion and late 60’s sitar string accompaniment, lyrics outlining a dream-trip scenario suggest sweetness overload. The clever inclusion of Munki-era Mary Chain guitar chords embedded within the chorus (the overdriven second verse of “birthday” as direct tonal point of reference) shows the artist in full command of his influences. That song will be included on the upcoming album ‘Sunny Side Down’ which will be out on vinyl (and digitally) in early 2016. Mark and his band The Rels will be performing as part of International Pop Overthrow festival which runs from November 4 through 8 and will feature more than 40 of the best pop and rock bands from New York and beyond. All the shows will be at Bar Matchless with Mark & The Rels performance on Sunday the 8th. – Dave Cromwell

A Friday morning better than any other, Daybreaker did it again. This time, the show was hosted at the Rock & Roll Hotel and attendees grooved away the early hours in costume. DJ Alejandra SstudD and MC Haile Supreme brought together their talents and put on a kickass show, spinning out awesome mixes and pumping up the crowd. Haile danced onstage, in the crowd, in circles of other dancers, keeping the juice-swilling, costumed crowd energized and exuding positivity. With the talents of a trumpeter, a trombonist, and a drummer, the atmosphere was the perfect start to a Friday. If you like lots of audience engagement or diverse EDM, make sure you catch Haile Supreme or DJ SstudD live. Check out DJ SstudD’s sick new remix below and don’t miss the next edition of Daybreaker DC!

Noise Met Sound head and IDM artist Lawrence Lindell will release his last self-titled solo album this Friday with an intimate party at Industry Gallery, featuring installation work from local artist Rachel Rusenko. Lindell confirms that he will still operate Noise Met Sound, curating and playing live shows that mix different modes of creative expression.

This final album, with Lindell’s trademark concoction of found sounds and chopped beats, chronicles his life after Britain, starting over with a new job, a creative slump, and reconciliation with his mother in Los Angeles.

"For a good while after being back I was crippled with depression. I couldn’t write and everything I created was shit and disappointing to me."

Lindell eventually focused his energies to write and publish a self-help book, which effectively reboot his energy and propped him to complete the album.

You can pre-order the last album here on Bandcamp. Listen to the opener "Still Free to Live" below. – Ryan Mo, flyer art by Dustin Garcia

Fayway is a NYC quartet influenced by Joni Mitchell’s more "adult" sounding albums (late ’70s-early ’80s), when the Canadian songwriter’s flirt with jazz became more obvious. Singer songwriter and keyboardist Morgan Heringe leads the group with her pristine voice and sinuous melodies, built on chords whose name would puzzle most rock musicians. On their brand new third record "Dreamboat" – the more linear and less experimental in her repertoire – her band mates gracefully seconds her songwriting style. Single "Pretty Crazy" (streaming below) is the album’s highlught – at least in our opinion. – photo by Sean Pierce

Brooklyn based electronic producer/songwriter Pepi Gingsber (whose previous band Companion was featured in our blog and mag back in 2012) has just unveiled a new project called N-A-R-C, with this new video inspired by Korean ‘Mukbang’ performances, in which cam-stars eat food in front on an online audience for entertainment – a brilliant idea to… push fame-seeking anorexic models to gain weight and attention at once? The single comes from her forthcoming debut EP ‘New Age Real Change,’ due February 26 via INSCAPE. 

The guys in NYC psych-fusion-pop band Solid Goold may not realize this now, but what just happened to them is priceless: they experienced (and unwittingly orchestrated) a story so absurd that it will spread like wildfire, and be recalled again and again to their friends and family for the rest of their lives. It will change the mood of many people for the better, and also help them promote their music. Legendary stuff…

We will just paste the core of it below (you can read the full version here): 

"Solid Goold would like to regretfully inform all of you that our European tour has been brutally cut short by the ruthless UK Border Force. We went into our trip blissfully unaware of how serious these borders (especially the UK apparently) really are. An unforeseen cascade of unfortunate circumstances led us to being REFUSED entry to the UK, only to be immediately placed back on a plane to JFK.

We were given advice from someone who admittedly has never attempted to enter the UK as a foreigner to just simply claim we were coming to the UK on holiday and had our instruments just to jam. 

But things (and our white lies) quickly spiraled out of control, culminating in the Border officers finding my 500 SOLID GOOLD BUSINESS CARDS which included a link to this page which resulted in them seeing our 2015 SOLID GOOLD EUROTOUR VIDEO (which was outrageously incriminating to say the least, let alone with an air of goofy/cocky/douchiness thinly veiled as a sense of humor i’m almost positive these officers did NOT appreciate) which was incredibly" embarrassing considering we had just LIED about what we were intending on doing.

Notwithstanding the hilarious turn of events, we wouldn’t be blogging about this if these guys’ music wasn’t good. They released eight track album "Alone in the World" in November 2013, and it’s an eclectic collection of genres minced in small bits and reconstructed in the shape of bizarre psychedelic-pop. Opener "Can’t Be Afraid of" (streaming) features a Barrettesque melody swimming in an orchestral arrangement full of pianos, flutes and horns, switching mid way into an odd bridge that sounds as if Elton John and Procol Harum were asked to play four bars each, over and over, for thirty seconds or so. "Right Eye" recycles Supertramp’s electric piano driven melodies (Supertramp, people, that’s a band that needs to be rediscovered!) but takes them for an unpredictable ride. Traces of reggae, classical music and even jazz emerge here and there in the rest of the record, which follows in the footsteps of NYC pioneers of eclectic/quirky pop They Might Be Giants. Not sure the Brits would have liked this stuff anyway (those guards certainly didn’t), but we do!