Molly Bergen

"What the Devil wants, believe the Devil's going to get. He's going to stretch her out, like the tape in a cassette," Swaby croons menacingly on The Heavy's latest single "Sixteen." A lyric that is both incredibly dirty and radio appropriate. You've got to appreciate that. Big, bad, jungle blues is coming your way from across the pond, people. Prepare, yourselves. The kind that slowly crawls down your spine into your hips and makes you feel evil. You know, the good kind.

Most people spend New Years Day wallowing in self pity under the weight of a beastly hangover or trying desperately to piece together the foggy series of events from the previous evening. The three members of The Low Anthem: Jeff Prystowsky, Josie Adams, and Ben Knox Miller set off to a tiny cabin on Block Island, RI on the first day of 2008 to record an album. The result was Oh My God, Charlie Darwin a folk album released in June of this year, which is chocked full of intelligent lyrics inspired by America's past and present laid gently on top of harmonies that make your heart ache. We caught up with bassist, Jeff Prystowsky, in Seattle as he was waiting for his pancakes this morning to talk about his latest album. Here is some of what was said.

Mali's favorite couple, Amadou and Mariam was greeted by an adoring crowd at the Henry Fonda Theater on Friday night. The pair first met each other at the Bamako's Institute for the Young Blind when they were just teenagers. Mariam had lost her sight at five due to complications from malaria, and Amadou had lost his due to a congenital cataract at fifteen. The two of them bonded over their love of music. Mariam had been singing at weddings since she was six years old and Amadou was renowned for his guitar playing. They fell in love, married, and began touring together as "the blind couple from Mali." Thirty years and many albums later, Amadou and Mariam have gained international fame with the help of such fans as Manu Chao and Damian Albarn, who produced their latest album, Welcome to Mali.

Elvis Perkins is back with a brand new sophomore album, Elvis Perkins in Dearland and this time he's ditching the solo act and bringing his band with him. The result is this delightfully eloquent collection of songs about live, love, and death is inspired by the New Orleans tradition of having a raucous band follow a funeral march. We sat down with Perkins before his show at the Troubadour and asked him a few questions about his new EP Doomsday and the end of the world.

Wrapped in a thick blanket of Sunday morning fog, Hollywood Forever Cemetery looked magical. In the soft darkness, palms trees and graves emerged on either side of the path, and there was a miraculous quiet that hovered over the cemetery. And then out of the gloom...a beacon of light. No, not the stage, the coffee vendor! Some enterprising folks had thought to put up a stand selling coffee and treats to the bleary eyed masses, which had a huge line trailing behind it of desperate people with cash already in their outstretched hands. Caffeine addiction is no joke.

"We were bums without jobs or anything to do, so we decided to form a band." Wye Oak's lead singer, Jenn Wasner giggles. "We really didn't want to do the typical acoustic stripped down duo type of band. It was really important to us that we had a range. Andy pretty much brainstormed his whole set up. I was pretty skeptical that he could pull it off. He wanted to create this whole bass drum thing. He disappeared into his basement for months and finally emerged with this instrument and was like, "Check it out! I can do it." And we had a band." Three years later, these unemployed bums have emerged as one of the most interesting bands out of Baltimore in a long time. Their hypnotizing vocals and hazy shoegaze melodies soon attracted the ears of Merge Records and the band took off.

There is no denying that Karen O. of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is a rock god. If it hasn't been written in stone, let's do that right now. Ask anyone who was in the sold-out crowd on Thursday night, and they will tell you that she was mesmerizing. Granted she comes with a lot of props and costumes, but even if Ms. O had come out wearing a burlap sack and stood there doing nothing, every eye in the place would be on her. Sure there are singers with better voices. Sure there are lead singers who can dance better than her. Sure there are people who wear more outrageous clothes. But Karen O. has got "it" whatever that intangible thing may be. That certain something that makes a giant zebra striped headdress/hoodie adorned with a circle of green tape in the middle and blue striped tights, look badass rather than utterly ridiculous.

The Soft Pack is officially screwed. Originally named, The Muslims, this hot garage band from San Diego (recently located to LA) , caught about the same amount of attention for their name as for their music. Eventually it got to the point where the band thought it would be better if they just changed it to the Soft Pack. As guitarist Matty McLaughlin explains, "We were sick of the shit people would say about the old name. I guess they were trying to be funny and some things that were said came off as racist… It just became fucking stupid." So they changed it, and were rewarded with a torrent of disapproval like a city under siege. Fans accused them of being lily-livered sissies and not sticking to their guns. Damned if they did, damned if they didn't. Whatever their name, they rock, hard, so we'll ignore all this nonsense about names and labels and whatnot, and focus instead on their music. We had a chat with Matty McLoughlin about The Soft Pack's sophomore album, which they just finished recording in Brooklyn a few weeks ago. Here is some of what was said.

You know that giant, gaping hole in your heart where the new Arcade Fire album should be? Might I suggest filling some of it with Fanfarlo's debut disk Reservoirs. The British six piece outfit stuffs their tunes to the brim with horns, glockenspiels, chimes, violins, guitars, bass, drums, and Balthazar's lovely, haunting vocals. Lyrically the album is all about mysterious misfortunes inspired by ghosts, Howard Hughes, and UFOs, weaving stories that are as intricate as the melodies behind them. We chatted with Simon Balthazar last weekend about the new disk. Here is some of what was said.

"I was pretty much just writing songs because they had to come out," Stuart McLamb tells me over the phone as he and his band the Love Language desperately try to navigate the back roads of North Carolina somewhere in the vicinity of Raleigh. "A song doesn't really exist until you record it, and I had all of these songs in my head that I had to put out there. Fuck, we've seen that sign before! " A few years ago, Stuart McLamb recorded the Love Language's self titled debut album in his parents' basement. Reeling from a breakup and carrying around a head bursting with songs he sat down, wrote, played, and recorded the entire disk on a $300 recording device. The result was a brilliant body of work with a gritty, lo-fi sound, which has been winning him fans all over the country.