Instant Playlist - February 4 2010

Holly Miranda

Dead Letter Chorus
The Long Goodnight (Code One)
All angst and reverb, "The Long Goodnight" plays out like one of those lovelorn country ballads from the ’50s, as performed by a band reared on a steady diet of Mazzy Star and the Cowboy Junkies.

The Hotrats
(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)
Two slumming members of Supergrass turn the Beastie Boys’ frat-boy classic into something suggestive of the Beatles after downing a marshmallow pie spiked with two dozen panes of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds–brand acid.

Past Lives
Hospital White (Suicide Squeeze)
It’s all about the live-wire riff as former Blood Brother Jordan Blilie twists vintage New York no-wave and left-leaning post-punk into something guaranteed to get you damaging the hardwood dance floor.

Major Lazer
Halo (Mad Decent)
Yes, it’s the Grammy-winning Beyoncé ballad, but performed inna dancehall stylee by Elephant Man, with completely different lyrics. So maybe it’s not the same song at all, but it might actually be a better one.

The Remedials
Test Tube Baby (Remedial)
Awe-inspiringly snotty vocals? Check! Speed-jag guitars? Roger! Lyrics that would have impressed those pinheads in the Ramones? Bingo! Get ready to meet your new favourite Vancouver punk band.

Four Tet
She Just Likes to Fight (Domino)
Ironically enough, so does the person we’ve had the misfortune of tethering our pony to, the best thing about this gorgeous exercise in down-tempo electronica being that it drowns out the hurricane when cued up for the headphones.

Dan Black
Pump My Pumps (Polydor)
Think Cher riding Prince’s royal-purple schlong in the old Studio 54 while a big- budget film crew tests out the machine guns for the set-in-Vietnam war scene next door. And then work it, work it, work it.

Blessure Grave
In the First Place (Alien8 Recordings)
Even with the just-like-honey vocals sweetening up the background, the postgoth ghouls of Blessure Grave still conjure up the darkest of dark days in a Scottish cemetery. Which is funny considering they call San Diego home.

Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore
Sweet Marie (Sub Pop)
This delicately wrought love song is dedicated not to a girl but to mining-ravaged central Appalachia, where, as Daniel Martin Moore tenderly croons, "the trees have stopped growin’ and the water’s turnin’ black". Beautifully heartbreaking.

Helping Haiti
Everybody Hurts (Syco)
If the idea of helping Haitian earthquake survivors isn’t enough to get you to download this, just imagine the surreal-beyond-fucking-belief notion of Miley Cyrus, Jon Bon Jovi, and Simple Susan Boyle covering R.E.M., karaoke-style.

Holly Miranda
Wake (XL)
Shimmery dream pop with a disaffected-sounding gal on vocals? Sounds like it might be Chan Marshall fronting Beach House, but it’s actually Brooklyn chanteuse Holly Miranda, who has "This Year’s It Girl" written all over her in black Sharpie.