I want to squeal so badly right now because I just heard the freshly remastered version of Gold Soundz by Pavement. It’s bliss! This re-jigged 1994 single is the opening track of Pavement’s forthcoming best of album, Quarantine The Past.

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Seminal Chapel Hill indie rock act Polvo are ramping up to the release of their album In Prism in early September with a free show at Manhattan’s Seaport Music Festival this Friday night. For a taste of their forthcoming album, check out this track, Beggar’s Bowl, below. Polvo also wrote a Secret Playlist for us.

There’s an early Split Enz feel about the music of Sydney indie rock band, The Woods Themselves. It’s particularly evident in the double-tracked vocals and the offbeat arrangements that the group employ. So we checked in with frontman Davey Cotsios and asked if the legendary New Zealand outfit were an influence?
 ‘That’s so insane it’s brilliant! Had you have said Crowded House, then we’d have some real beef. Seriously, I’d find you and punish you. I really do dig Split Enz, but I can’t say I’ve ever had them close in mind, and I’ve never looked to them for guidance. My buddy Danno – he lived below me years back – gave me this Enz record that we found in his mum’s attic. We’d get messed up on Tuesday nights and jam it. That Leaky Boat song was a favourite. We thought we heard the guy across the street beating on his woman one time while we were jamming that Leaky Boat song. We watched the cops arrive and she denied it in tears from the front door. We kicked his motorbike over later. Just to be sure, you know. Bad neighbourhood man’. The Woods Themselves’ album, (C’Mon) Do The Beach Thing, is out now on Understandation through Inertia.

Download their track, Groove Wind

We love Australian band The Grates. So much so that we asked their frontwoman Patience to write an exclusive diary for Lost At E Minor over the next week, giving us the inside word on what the band are up to. We’ll run a new posting from it each day. This is her entry from last Saturday: ‘Today nothing happened. Actually, that’s not true. Today by sheer coincidence we all went and saw Batman independently. Awesome. So good. Don’t see Batman because you want to, see it because you need to. I don’t care what you think, just see it. Spend your money. At the very least it will give you something to debate with your friends about. This is something we do all the time at Grates headquarters. It’s a fun way to find out more about your friends and also solidify your own opinions. Who knows when your already explored opinion on weather it’s okay to kick a robot dog will be challenged. Trust me, something like this will one day happen to you and if you take part in regular debates with friends you will be more than able to cope with the situation’.

Listen to The Grates track, Sukkafish.

How can you not love a band called ¡Apeshit!? Their name says it all. I got to catch these guys tour at a warehouse in Bed-Stuy the other night as they were capping off their most recent tour, and even though there were only 20 or so people in the audience by the time they went on, their set was absolutely epic, culminating in frontman Pat Berran being hoisted up and subsequently dropped by the drunken, sweaty, and heavily tattooed crowd. If you love fast, spastic, intensely brutal punk, this band will make you crap your pants.

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Sydney indie heroes (in the nicest possible way), The Paper Scissors (TPS to those that know the secret handshake) have made a video for their new single, The Bandit. And it’s good. Damn good.

This New York indie-rock outfit won our hearts with the Kaiser Chiefs-esque single Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt off their acclaimed debut album. One man down, and with a sound that comfortably straddles indie and pop, the duo seem to be mourning the departure of former drummer and friend, Michael Tapper. Describing themselves as rock music of the thoughtful, sometimes epic, often loud, vaguely danceable, implicitly humanist variety, the trio-turn-duo bring a darker, more intense variation of goods to the table on Brain Thrust Mastery. Without the sunshine of their debut, With Love And Squalor, We Are Scientists’ sophomore release is gritty, angry and filled with what critics have claimed is an excessive amount of self-doubt. In their defence, when did riff driven, 80’s-infused pop-rock ever come without a teaspoon or two of self-loathing?

The Deal sisters have dropped off the indie-rock radar of late, but this clip of them covering Hank Williams’ I Can’t Help It reminds us why we all loved them so much back in the day. Incidentally, the Breeders are set to release their new album, Mountain Battles, in April.

Give me a minor key song anytime. Yup, I’ll take the heartfelt purity of an introspective trawl over any warm and fuzzy major key shimmy. I once asked UK band The Editors why there aren’t more cheerful songs in the world: ‘Three words’, vocalist Tom Smith replied. ‘Shiny Happy People’. He smirked. I grimaced. Enough said.

Listen to Casiotone for the Painfully Alone’s, Don’t They Have Payphones Wherever You Were Last Night.

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