April 23, 2013 – Jack White might've showered listeners with the most lavish Record Store Day goodies, but Boards of Canada were responsible for Saturday's most intriguing puzzle. The Scottish masters of spaced-out electronics haven't released an album since 2005's The Campfire Headphase, but an unannounced 12-inch record attributed to the duo showed up at New York's Other Music. The record appeared to be one of several, each presumably bearing some kind of code.Now, as 2020k points out (via FACT), London's Rough Trade East has sold another 12-inch of these as yet unexplained BoC singles. This copy's packaging contains the same series of slashes, dashes, and X's as the one sold at Other Music, which would seem to pour cold water on speculation that there must be only six records, each with different codes, spread around the world.

April 23, 2013 – Record Store Day is to Jack White what New Year's Eve is to Diddy. In other words, White's Third Man Records outdid everyone else when it came to throwing a party on Saturday. This year, the Nashville record store introduced a recording booth that lets visitors cut as much as two minutes of audio onto vinyl. According to Third Man's blog, Neil Young even took a turn in the booth. White, the official 2013 Record Store Day ambassador and, through the White Stripes' 10th-anniversary Elephant reissue, also the day's unofficial king, also spent some time with the refurbished 1947 Voice-o-Graph machine. The result, an appropriately rough-hewn rendition of past collaborator Loretta Lynn's 1970 country classic "Coal Miner's Daughter," is below. The question, which Diddy must also face every January 1: How's he possibly going to top himself next year?

April 23, 2013 – Thom Yorke is no fan of most electronic dance music today. That should be no surprise if you're the least bit familiar with his bands Radiohead or Atoms for Peace, which show far more interest in abstraction and complexity than so much recent EDM's Ibiza-via-Vegas glitz. What's more interesting, though, is how Yorke and fellow Atoms for Peace member (and longtime Radiohead producer) Nigel Godrich explain their distaste for the megaclub-and-velvet-ropes scene.Basically, they compare it to fashion. In this analogy, shared in an interview with Rolling Stone, artists like Flying Lotus and others associated with Los Angeles's Low End Theory venue are "haute couture" — Godrich actually uses this phrase!

April 23, 2013 – All indications are André 3000 and Beyoncé's cover of Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black" will be awful. A 90-second snippet of the track from Baz Luhrmann's upcoming The Great Gatsby film soundtrack hit iTunes yesterday, and SPIN called it "a FEMA-level disaster." Never one to shy away from tossing his opinions to a morsel-hungry press, Amy's father, Mitch, is offering his own criticisms. As NME points out, MItch Winehouse told the Daily Mail he's none too chuffed about the OutKast rapper and Destiny's Child diva's slow-motion reworking of his daughter's song. "I don't think she brings anything to it," he's quoted as saying of Beyoncé.

April 23, 2013 –  Janelle Monáe's busy three years since her her masterful astral-R&B debut The ArchAndroid have raised plenty of reasons to worry she might fall off. She's more of a fixture on TV commercials these days than she is on radio, though she did grace last year's massive fun. hit "We Are Young" with a backing vocal. And then there's the fact she told a reporter forever ago she was hoping to put out not one, but two albums in 2012. That year has come and gone, but luckily Monáe's fiercely independent soul-funk prowess has not. She already crushed Coachella. Now, new single "Q.U.E.E.N." pairs her up with fellow R&B iconoclast Erykah Badu, and it's a sweaty, organic-feeling ode to doing your damn thing. It's as socially conscious as the Marvin Gaye shoutout in Monáe's lithe closing rap verse might suggest, but also as suited to a summer barbecue.

April 22, 2013 – "Down on the waterfront / Out on the boondocks," Nick Cave intones more than an once on "Animal X," his newly released Record Store Day single with the Bad Seeds. Uttered in the Australian goth-rock legend's magisterial, lightly accented baritone, it's a phrase that would be at home on any Cave-related project. This outtake from the sessions that gave us this year's excellent Push the Sky Away backs Cave's vocals with pulsating, droning ominousness, and the lyrics only become stranger and more horrifying as the song goes on. But if you managed to pick this up on Saturday, you're probably feeling pretty lucky right now. Might want to stay away from the waterfront, though.

April 22, 2013 – Of all the acts who've remixed Phoenix's "Entertainment," from the French band's out-tomorrow new album Bankrupt!, Grizzly Bear might be the most natural fit. While Dinosaur Jr.'s surprisingly subdued reworking places the Versailles-sprung group in a sterling indie-rock lineage, and Blood Orange's sultry, R&B-tinged remix draws lines to newer pop arrivals like Solange and Sky Ferreira, Grizzly Bear and Phoenix are transatlantic peers: They're established, critically acclaimed bands of a similar vintage, both with well-deserved reputations for being nice and smart. But rather than simply turn "Entertainment" into a Grizzly Bear song, the Brooklyn band chops it up into a skittering electronic track more reminiscent of IDM (kids, ask your grandparents) than today's EDM.

April 22, 2013 – Good news for people who — ah, hell, you know where this is headed. Modest Mouse haven't put out a new album since 2007's We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, but as Consequence of Sound points out, they've performed three unreleased songs in recent days, all of which have been captured on YouTube. "Shit in My Cut," introduced last week in Pomona, Calif., puts frontman Isaac Brock's gruff yawp over a lurching trudge and crystalline guitar leads. "Sugar Boats," played the same night and previously performed last year as "Heart of Mine," brought more of a boho-hobo, Man Man-man bounce. The best video footage of all three is for "Be Brave," which the mighty Mouse performed at Coachella; amid jaunty keyboard and insistent violin, Brock howls the title phrase like he's trying to convince himself.

April 22, 2013 – Deerhunter's gripping, theatrical late-night TV performance last month was no fluke. Monomania, the follow-up to 2010's Halcyon Digest, is out on May 7 via 4AD, and the whole album feels as liberated and raw as that appearance, which saw wigged frontman Bradford Cox clutching the microphone with bandaged fingers and strolling offstage mid song. The noise-lacerated opening pair may put off fans who jumped on board with Halcyon Digest's shimmering dream-pop anthems, but the honky tonk-torching "Pensacola," Queen-invoking "Dream Captain," and bigwheel confessional "Nitebike" are uniquely appealing in the Deerhunter crew's extensive catalog. Sometimes single-minded obsession can set you free. (via NPR)

April 22, 2013 – Scientists recently discovered two Earth-like planets about 1,200 light years away. NASA's Mars rover Curiosity keeps scouring the Red Planet for signs of life. And somewhere out there, astronomers one day will find MGMT, who surely rate among the more mind-bending examples of Life As We Know It in the galaxy. On Record Store Day over the weekend, the band released a cassette single containing "Alien Days," a song they've said will appear on their upcoming third album and have previously played live. It's a sumptuously detailed, exquisitely zonked-out space-rock construction, journeying into a similar effects- and synth-warped beyond as the Flaming Lips' Essential 2013 album& The Terror. Though the full lyrics will take some parsing, there's little terror here, only wonder.