WE'RE SUPPORTING

These beautiful portraits by New York-based artist, Skye Nicholas, are works of oil pigment and crayon on brown paper. Read more

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

Aesop’s signature space in Fitzroy, Melbourne, looks amazing, we’ve got the word on how and why. Why was Gabriel Garcia Marquez chosen as the featured author? ‘There are literary giants and then there are writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose talents redefine not only the genres they choose to work within but what’s possible in literature as a whole. The fact that his work has transcended his own language and culture has also prompted our decision to pay homage’. Read more

WE'RE WEARING

Cheap Monday are arguably one of the biggest revolutions in denim since Levi’s. They’re pretty much the uniform second skin for the music totin’, cons scuffin’ youth of today. Read more

WE'RE THINKING

If you’re all a Twitter and Tweeting is your thing, then you might like to follow the new Lost At E Minor feed, which is an extension of the things we post about here. We get access to a lot of tips and information that we don’t always post about. But we will Twitter it. Yup, Tweets are fun and brevity is our friend. So if you have a Twitter account and you want to follow us, we’d love to have you on-board.

WE'RE READING

DM Stith recently signed to Asthmatic Kitty, the same label as Sufjan Stevens, and has a new EP out this week titled Curtain Speech, featuring contributions from Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), Rafter, Sebastian Krueger and the string quartet Osso. Think Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear meets Arthur Russell. We got the rundown from him on his eight favourite songs right now and he kicked off with The Shangri-Las’ Out In The Streets [listen below]: ‘1:22 – 1:43 is a miracle. I’ve never been so obsessed with twenty seconds of high-hat and high school girl shrieks: it’s a raging teenage fantasy that all the composition notebooks in all the lockers of 1965 couldn’t write better. That the singers have managed to preserve their naivety perfectly in this three minute song may be the reason I feel recording pop music is worthwhile’. Read the rest of DM Stith’s Secret Playlist.

Damn, ten years of playing guitar in loud rock bands, and not once did we have a slamming moshpit like this. Banging heads is so, so fun.

WE'RE LISTENING TO

If you ever happen to find yourself riding across the mid-west on horseback with an iPod jangling about in your holster, be sure to let Calexico soundtrack the experience. They’re cleverly fusing a range of genres, mixing some good old country with US indie, a bit of jazz and even, in 2003’s Feast of Wire, some smatterings of electronica. Lead singer Joey Burns gives a healthy amount of cowboy twang and the soaring orchestral background and sweet country guitar licks add a real atmosphere to the music.

Listen to the Calexico song, Convict Pool.