Instant Playlist - September 22 2011

Das Racist

Xeno & Oaklander
Sets & Lights (Wierd)
If someone set out to satirize goths by moaning portentously over a tinny techno track, it might sound a lot like "Sets & Lights". The fact that Xeno & Oaklander are actually dead serious is what makes the whole thing rad.

Zooey Deschanel
Hey Girl (20th Century Fox)
The theme song from the new Fox sitcom New Girl is sugary-sweet and adorable, much like Zooey Deschanel herself. It’s also insubstantial fluff, like pretty much everything she does. But how can you not love her? It’d be like hating kittens.

The Fucking Wrath
Swan Song of a Mad Man (Tee Pee)
Plants one foot in Pantera-strength aggro-metal and the other in smoking-Marshalls southern rock. Crank it, crack open a case of Miller High Life, and fuck that ’79 Camaro up.

Pallers
Come Rain, Come Sunshine (Labrador)
Lord knows how they do it, but Swedes seem to have a knack for taking the digital chill out of down-tempo electronica and injecting it with seriously moving emotion. (We were going to make an IKEA joke here, but couldn’t think of one.)

Wild Beasts
Thankless Thing (Domino)
Nazareth once sang "Now you’re messing with a son of a bitch", and Iggy Pop claimed to be a street-walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm. And the fey art-rockers in Wild Beasts? "I could be somewhat curmudgeonly". Badass alert!

Ohbijou
Iron and Ore (Last Gang)
Old-country strings, celestial synths, and vocals that suggest a dual fascination with Julee Cruise and Scottish twee-pop add up to a good idea of what heaven sounds like on a crisp fall day.

Jack White and Insane Clown Posse
Mountain Girl (Third Man) If that Mozart-inspired ode to ass-licking they released a few weeks ago didn’t make you wonder what the hell they’re smoking down in Detroit, this pedal-steel-burnished number about love among meth-addled hillbillies will.

Kourosh Yaghmaei
Share Cheshmat (Now-Again)
Rather than come up with something snappy that won’t even begin to do this hash-scented chestnut justice, we’ll quote from the cover sticker: "Pre-Revolution Psychedelic Rock from Iran: 1973-1979". Mind. Fucking. Blowing.

No Joy
He Cried (Associated Electronic Recordings)
It’s a cover of a song first recorded by the ’60s girl group the Shangri-Las, but we’re guessing the original wasn’t a six-minute drone swaddled in more distortion and feedback than the entire Jesus and Mary Chain catalogue.

The Barr Brothers
Give the Devil Back His Heart (Secret City)
The song title—not to mention the band name—screams old-timey country. That you get fuzzed-out ’60s-psych pop instead isn’t disappointing in the least.

Das Racist
Power (Greedhead Music)
Not a Kanye West cover (and not an Ice-T cover either, for that matter), Das Racist’s "Power" is as inscrutable as any of the group’s other songs, but when you drop references ranging from L. Ron Hubbard to Miley Cyrus, you just rule.