Video Age - Living Alone

They do have some videos on YouTube, but they're kind of static: not much motion in the picture. NEVERTHELESS, this Nawleans duo have put out one of the best, most moving LPs these two ears have heard so far this year. Here are our four faves. Click here if you want to hear and buy more of Living Alone.

Secret Shrines - Collisions

Groove now to this slinky little psychrocker emanating from Brisband, Sacred Shrines. The quintet's new LP, Come Down from the Mountain can be purchased here, here and here.

Hear and buy all or part of the LP below.

Getting sucked into Laika's Orbit . . .

. . . does not suck. Oh, no, far from it, quite the opposite, in fact. Through the good graces of the excellent new-to-us blog Poprock Record we found the excellent new-to-us blog Mufoandthings. And through the excellent Mufoandthings we found the excellent new-to-us New England band Laika's Orbit. Their name-your-price LP kicks off with our favorite song on No Matter What It Takes, "No Matter What It Takes," as you can easily see and hear.

Speaking - well, writing, actually - of the aforementioned Poprock Record, we highly recommend his cogent post, "Poprock versus power pop." If we could write so fluently and persuasively about music, well, we just might give it a try. Thus, we do not even.

Since they'll apparently be touring in August with Amherst, Mass. band California X and since we've bought, oh, a mutant handful (7) of C X's songs, we'll give you a widgie with one of our favorites. The rest of Nights in the Dark is also in the widgie.

Isn't It Noice?: Killer Dose from Plastic Nancy

Woodbridge, Virginians Sam and Chase of Woodbridge, Virginia band Shirt/Pants have (temporarily?) doffed duds and formed a side project called Plastic Nancy. Here's our favorite from their demo called Demo. Free download at Bandcamp.

Coupla Hits from Amyl and the Sniffers

One hit too many? Butyl be better?

We thank the divine Thibault for hooking us up with these Melbourne punkpoppers (prolly more punk than poppers, despite their bandname). Below are our two favorites from their EP, Giddy Up, which you can download for name-your-price here at Bandcamp.

Milkpunch Make (Our) Junk Pop

This Sydney band make high-quality junk pop. The pic is actually from a different product, but we wanted you to see what they look like. Thanks to The Revue for the cranial uplift.

Free download here.

Music of the Sphere: Pleasers, Flat Worms, Nude Party, Prissteens, Sun Days, Spook School, Bad Sports, Field Mouse, Happy Diving, Joanna Gruesome

Definitely Pleasers.

We sincerely thank these fabloggers for posting the following downloadables. We love them all but are particularly excited to see M. Thibault continuing to post the outstanding pop of Mr. Matthew Melton, he of Bare Wires, Warm Soda, Snake Flower 2, and his latest band, Pleasers. Feel free to check out our previous posts on these popalicious incarnations by clicking here and here.

Pleasers - Leading Me On & Here Comes My Girlfriend - Still in Rock

Flat Worms - Sovereignty & Red Hot Sand - Still in Rock

The Nude Party - Time To Go - Still in Rock

The Prissteens - Oh Billy! - Still in Rock

The Sun Days - Don't Need to Be Them - KEXP Blog

The Spook School - David Bowie Songs - KEXP Blog

Bad Sports - Living With Secrets - Side One Track One

Field Mouse - The Order Of Things - Side One Track One

Happy Diving - Don't Be Afraid Of Love - Side One Track One

Joanna Gruesome - Pretty Fucking Sick Of It All - Side One Track One

Update: Longtime visitor John B. Goode wrote that these links weren't working. We checked and sure enough, left-clicking does not work for some reason. They do seem to work, though, if you open them in another tab. Try one of these three ways:

Click with the scroll wheel.

Ctrl-Left click

Right click-Open link in new tab

Hope these work. Please let us know if they don't. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Thanks, JBG!

Whyte Horses - Promise I Do to Pop Or Not

Big mwah to The Finest Kiss for the headsup on superb Manchester psychpop collective Whyte Horses. The band is composed of Dom Thomas, Jim Noir, and members of Doves, Belle & Sebastian, and The Go! Team. Read all about it at TFK and download/listen below.

"Promise I Do" is a great big WAV file, so you might want to convert it after downloading. You can hear more Whyte Horses songs at the CRC Records SoundCloud page and buy the excellent May 2016 release Pop Or Not here, here, here, or here.

Free download here.

Streamers: Honey Radar, The Black Delta Movement, Bubblegum Lemonade, Teenage Fanclub, Flyying Colours, GØGGS

Honey Radar, of course.

These wouldn't drop at Songdrop, so we're streaming them below. Kind of a frantically eclectic mix, so you're warned and welcome. Of course we love 'em.

Melody Fields - "Morning Sun"

We encountered this excellent song by Gothenburgers Melody Fields at Psychgazer's July Psych Playlist and found it has genuine sax appeal, especially around the 1:54 mark. Maybe you did too? More music here.

Taking The Cotton Mather Pledge to Celebrate the Death of the Cool

We got in on the ground floor of Austin faveband Cotton Mather's I Ching-based song cycle project, ascended to Level 2, and then kind of zoned. We're not sure what storey the song below's at, but we like it anyway. Previous posts-cum-downloads are here and here.

The band's first LP in 15 years, Death of the Cool, is due to drop July 29 of this year. Read here, if you haven't already. We've heard it and loved it and are pretty sure you'll want to make the register go "Ka-ching" for the I Ching.

Basketball Shorts Are Hot and Ready Indeed

Austin poppunkers Basketball Shorts drop their excellent brand-spankin'-new LP, Hot and Ready, this very day via Austin Town Hall Records and Fleeting Youth Records. You can download the first track, "Looking,"  via the SoundCloud widget below and listen to and buy the whole caboodle via the Bandcamp widget under that.

Incidentally, we just checked and found the various free and legals we posted back in 2013 are also still available, should your clickfinger(s) not be exhausted.

And speaking of SoundCloud, it might be that their primitive equipment has not caught up with our computers' state-of-the-art technowizardry (or vice versa), but we've been noticing at this and other blogs we visit that SoundCloud widgets have been taking a long time to load in of late. So be patient, if possible.