Photography by Zach Gold

For those in the know, Santogold is already here, already it. This summer, with her first full-length album on the way, she’s poised to take over America with her genre-smashing sound. Santi White is a bridge. She mediates the space between commercial pop and underground art. She partakes in the party scene but critiques it as well. She’s a practitioner of musical alchemy, spinning punk, dancehall, rap, and electroclash into sonic gold. Santi White is culture-clash, a walking, breathing, singing, and dancing mash-up of personalities and musical preferences. Even her stage name crosses the bizarre boundaries of late-night TV, bombastic jewelry, and wrestlers from a planet called Zoran.
     The first time we tried to interview the artist formally known as Santogold, on a Saturday morning in Miami, she forgot. And so, we waited a few hours. We hold no grudge, for this seems to be her nature. Santogold is no morning lark. But she’s no night owl either. “I was supposed to do a show at two in the morning,” she sleepily says, referring to a party thrown the previous night by DJ-cum-friend Diplo at Miami’s Winter Music Conference. “But instead I was asleep. I tried to but I couldn’t do it. I’m not really a late-night person. I don’t even know if my voice works at two in the morning.” Maybe there is some noontime avian option, for it is in such midway, transitional spaces that Santogold shines.
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Illustration by Peter Nguyen

For the average person the term “go-go” conjures up images of miniskirts and pole dancing. In Washington, D.C., however, the term immediately brings to mind the striking chords of ’70s funk, heavy percussion, and all the bouncy grooves that laid the groundwork for the city’s hip-hop past and present. Sitting at the forefront of D.C.’s old-school re-evolution is the exuberant Wale (pronounced “wah-lay”), whose dynamic lyricism and confident sound are drenched with the capital’s legendary musical history. After signing a production deal with Mark Ronson’s Allido Records, Wale has become recognized as an innovator in the hip-hop community, his stylish wordplay backed by the signature go-go of godfathers like the Backyard Band and Chuck Brown. “I’m just hoping to bring [go-go music] to the forefront,” he says. His latest effort, 100 Miles and Running, should do just that, with tracks produced by Best Kept Secret, Judah, and, of course, Mr. Ronson himself. Whether he’s discussing his disparate musical influences (“Let’s Ride”), recounting funny drug stories (“Warming Up Cane”), or collaborating with the “other” Parisian duo (“W.A.L.E.D.A.N.C.E.”), Wale finds a way to tie it all together. “I just listen to a lot of music,” he says. “I mean, everyone from Simon and Garfunkel to the Monkees to Bob Marley to the Beatles.” He even has aspirations to work with British wunderkind James Morrison. With one ear for the past and another for the present, Wale — along with the whole go-go revival — seems more ready to step up to the limelight.

Photography by Alexander Wagner

“If you like Björk as much as Boulez. If you’re a Britton fan, call me,” implored the Craigslist ad that, in 2006, eventually fleshed out the string section of My Brightest Diamond. Until then, founder Shara Worden straddled two musical worlds: New York’s avant-garde indie music scene and that of her freshly earned University of North Texas opera degree. “I distinctly remember this summer when I’d really pushed for certain operatic auditions and didn’t get in, and I was kind of like, ‘You know what, I’m going to take this as a sign of what my destiny is supposed to be here,’” Worden says. She continued her music education informally and eclectically by studying composition with Australian composer Padma Newsome (of The National), playing in a band called Awry, and going out on tour as the head cheerleader of Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoismakers. “If you have these little creative releases of energy or alternate ideas, it creates a fertile ground for your primary project,” she elaborates. In Worden’s case, all that cultivated fertility led her to form My Brightest Diamond.

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Astralwerks

With their third album, Hot Chip mature and end up sounding like…well, a lot like New Order. Lacking their trademark humor and bad fashion sense, the band abandon their trademark pop pastiche and leave it all for the dancefloor. It’s a risky move and could have failed miserably (nerds rapping about Escalades and rims was part of their appeal, after all). Yet Made in the Dark sounds very “now” — and completely unlike the toast of indie-electronica currently filling blogs everywhere (Dan Deacon, Justice, etc.). Erlend Oye may be the unquestionable king of white-boy electro-nerd stylings, but Alex Taylor is a close second, and when he slows the jams down Hot Chip may just be the ultimate basement makeout band. Made in the Dark is an album sure to be on everyone’s list this spring.

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Jagjaguwar

I always marvel at the endless derivations of a voice paired with acoustic guitar; Bon Iver (AKA Justin Vernon) is the latest to embrace and advance that basement tape sound. French for “Good Winter” (and intentionally misspelled), there couldn’t be a more apropos name to sum up this debut, supposedly recorded in a remote Wisconsin cabin during that season. It curls up in the sometimes difficult and sometimes comforting moments of solitude. There are two surprises here: the arrangements and the vocals – a soulful drawl that comes off like a chilled-out Kyp Malone, with accurate pitch but more importantly unrestrained emotion.

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Lies Records/Last Gang Records

It isn’t odd that a pair of young Toronto hipsters decided to name themselves after She-Ra’s fortress and set out to create the sound of the future — but it is odd that they succeeded. You’ll fail trying to label them nu-rave or mark them off as a contributor to the eight-bit scene; a close listen to Crystal Castles’ self-titled debut reveals a varied and audacious collection of conflicted and creepy electronic songs. Created by a multi-instrumentalist possessed by Sega and a female voice that assaults with chants and static shouts, Crystal Castles have made it to the next level.

Vice

Few bands combine pain and pleasure as deftly as the Raveonettes. The Danish duo’s latest release, Lust Lust Lust, finds their tender harmonies once again surrounded by a wall of sound: heavily distorted heartbreak, fuzzy guitars, and countless Jesus and Mary Chain references. The album flourishes in loneliness (”Hallucinations”) and blissful sadness (”With My Eyes Closed”), yet is brightened by occasional sunny hand clapping and sugary sweet sentiments (”Sad Transmission”). Even if it often seems huddled a bit too close to the distortion pedal, Lust Lust Lust has enough surprises, hooks, and atmospherics to make it worth repeated listens.

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Photography by Jay Brooks

Rock ‘n’ roll has been the same since its inception; same sentiments, same instruments, same chords. They do say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But with a simple set of rules and road signs to follow it’s easy for musicians to slip into cruise control. Which is what rumble strips are for — raised ridges at the side of highways that, as wheels slip off track, cause hammering jolts of alarm. Thankfully, The Rumble Strips, the band, live up to their namesake.
     Growing up in Tavistock, Devon, the boys — Charlie Waller on vocals, Tom Gorbutt on sax, Matthew Wheeler on drums, and Henry Clarke on guitar — first started playing together simply to relieve the boredom of small-town life. “We weren’t totally isolated,” Waller says of their beginnings. “It’s not like we didn’t listen to music; it was more that we grew up without the music press. We would ‘discover’ records by Adam & The Ants or The Stones, usually years too late and without any context to put them into.” This meant two things. First, their influences were widely varied. Second, by remaining oblivious to the idolatry rock stars inspire, there was no apprehension about following them down their well-trodden path. “It began,” Waller picks up, “without anyone really thinking about it but, by sixteen I was decided. This is what I was going to do.” And so, from the living rooms of parent’s houses the sounds of skiffly off-beat guitars, an awkward brass section and stuttered drums began to sound.
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Photography by Alexander Wagner

In February 2006, four seniors from Columbia University, in New York, got together to compete in the Columbia Engineering School’s Battle of the Bands. They finished in third place, out of only four contestants. And so, Vampire Weekend was born.
     With jovial bluegrass-loving Chris Tomson on drums, cool and self-assured Ezra Koenig on guitar and vocals, mad musical genius Rostam Batmanglij on keys and string arrangements, and buttoned-up, “Team Dad” Chris Baio on bass, Vampire Weekend have excavated a new brand of musical anthropology. J. Crew, meet the kente cloth. Earth-tone cardigans have been tied tightly around Polo collars flipped upright, as the Kanda Bongo Man is blasted to eleven. Call it “post-hipster”. Call it “post-colonial”. Call it “post-baccalaureate prep-rock”, Vampire Weekend just hope you call it good.
     Two years after that fateful Battle of the Bands, these bygone bronze medalists have struck gold with ubiquitous praise from the likes of The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone, and even some primetime loving from MTV’s TRL for their self-titled debut. But the specter of third place remains. “It’s hard to take [the attention] too seriously when there are multiple shows where there are still only thirty people [in the audience],” says Tomson, who cites the band’s addiction to Arby’s roast beef as further evidence of their modest ways.
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Photography by Árni Torfason

Forget partying like a rock star…get your ass to Iceland where rock stars go for lessons in serious excess at the Iceland Airwaves music festival. What began in an airplane hangar nine years ago as a poorly funded underground showcase event for local DJs has metamorphosed into one of the coolest international music festivals this side of the Arctic Circle. Each year, during the third week of October, bands and fans, DJs and dance crowds, press and promoters from across Europe, the US, and Canada, migrate en masse, like so many music-obsessed party puffins, to join their Icelandic counterparts in the city of Reykjavik, which hosts the hell-bent four-day extravaganza. With more than 140 bands and DJs expected to play at ten official show venues and fourteen or so unofficial ones, this year’s event guarantees nonstop all-night show hopping punctuated with the kind of compulsory communal substance abuse one would expect from any civilization that goes from the never-ending daylight of summer to the winter’s endless months of perpetual night, with only art, music, sex, and alcohol to stave off the madness. (Give up on sleep altogether and get over to a neighborhood bar to see how the locals do their best late-night hardcore gettin’ down.) The musical mayhem culminates with the Blue Lagoon after-party, wherein a caravan of buses hauls the festival’s survivors sixty miles out to the country’s most famous geothermal spa and deposits the delirious revelers in the silica-rich waters for a serious detox. You gotta’ love this country. What other music festival offers you the opportunity to rock yourself half to death and still return home spa-fresh with silky smooth skin?