I love the glitchy electro-pop of Saratoga band Phantogram, whose album Eyelid Movies is out now on Ghostly. Josh Carter, one half of the duo, says: ‘Daydreams, the spots you see moving around when your eyes are closed tight, and the shapes you see in the world, those are the kinds of things we want to surface in your mind when you hear a Phantogram song.’ And you do, as you spin to its gloriously wistful intonations. [Listen to When I'm Small]

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The story of this electro-pop duo begins with a pair of high school sweethearts and arrives now at their debut release, Goodbye Friend, Welcome Lover, which reached number two on the Canadian campus radio charts. We got the inside word from them on the music that inspires them. They started with the Delorean song, Grow [listen below]: ‘We first heard of Delorean while on tour in Spain. They were all over the Spanish music press. Then we finally heard them on the indie radio station playing in the van. Mucho bueno’. [Read the rest of Hexes and Ohs' Secret Playlist]

Icelandic singer-songwriter Hafdis Huld was formerly the frontwoman of electro-pop collective Gus Gus, before featuring as a vocalist on Tricky’s 2008 album Knowle West Boy, and, more recently, launching a solo career. We checked in with her and asked her to tell us about the eight songs that are getting most traction on her iPod at the moment. She began with the Dolly Parton song, Jolene [listen below]: ‘If I had to choose my all-time favorite song, I think it would be this one. It’s just one of those songs I wish I had written every time I hear it. I have many memories of singing along with it in the car in Reykjavik with my mum and my sister’. Read the rest of Hafdis Huld’s Secret Playlist.

Fresh off tour with M83, Brooklyn’s School of Seven Bells have a handful of live sessions popping up online from KCRW, KEXP and Limewire. If you live in New York, the group are playing next Monday, December 15, at Mercury Lounge. You can download their single, Half Asleep, from our Music Download section.

With their dynamic and exciting electro-pop sound, Brooklyn group School of Seven Bells are just about the hottest thing out of the borough this year since fluoro coloured hair combs made their omnipresent comeback.

We spoke with Benjamin Curtis, one third of the trio, and asked him — given how intricate the production is on their debut album, Alpinisms — how hard it was for the group to let a song go from the mixing stage to the mastering stage: ‘It is a delicate process, for sure. I’m sure you can imagine that we could continuously work on any piece of music for the rest of eternity, but that’s where the chemistry with the three of us really starts to work. We really trust each other musically, so as soon as we reach a point where all three of us are happy with what we are hearing, we have to stop there. It takes a lot of discipline, but it’s totally necessary. Otherwise, we’d have never finished this record’.

Half Asleep is the song of 2008. No doubt about it. What do you remember most about the writing of it?
‘It actually started from a small vocal loop I’d put together. I’d arranged and bent this little snippet of music into a great little melody that later in a way became the basis of the chorus. Some chords were added, and we just let it sit to see where it would go. Claudia had some inspiring changes in her life, out of which came her words and vocals for the verses which were written over what I had done. Alley, being inspired by what Claudia was saying, and feeling really sympathetic with that emotion, came up with and sang the chorus, and it all worked together magically. It was written and recorded very quickly, and in the end was probably about as collaborative as any of us have ever been musically, and the result really shows. It’s a special song for us’.

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