Critics and fans alike rally behind José González work for good reason. True to form, González’s songs are more impressions than fully fleshed out pieces, but these fragments woven together achieve a grand tapestry of textured soul. Relying on longtime friends Tobias Winterkorn (organ, Moog) and Elias Araya (drums), Fields is a tranquil compendium of González’s strengths. Rife with intimacy and restrained experimentation, Fields is the follow up to the Gothenburg trio’s EP debut, Black Refuge, and though it has been five years, the contributions complement the velvety smooth vocals of González. The formula is simple: slowly build a song layer by layer and ease out after the climax. Transitioning at a stately pace, the soft percussion on “It’s Alright” balances the vivaciousness of “Off Point”, only to transform into the lushly finger-plucked “Rope & Summit”. At times, Fields is sparse, infused with rock, or echoing the psychedelic — regardless, it always lives up to González’s expectedly spellbinding work.

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Buy this at iTunes. After the jump, check out the video for “Always”.

Chilly Gonzales is the Philip Glass of the iPad set. But that might be selling the pianist-cum-rapper-cum-producer-cum-actor with the cartoon-character name very short. Gonzales’ latest full-length, Ivory Tower, is the soundtrack to a film of the same name, in which he stars alongside Peaches and Tiga in a chess-battling love triangle. Ivory’s primarily instrumental piano compositions alternate between jumping, swing-y, saucy grooves, aggressive belligerence, and inquisitive suspense. However, it is live where Gonzales really shines, as I recently caught him at Café Largo, in Los Angeles. Touring under the marquee “Piano Talk Show”, Gonzales mans a beat-up old upright piano, whose innards are exposed with the front panel ripped and worn off. Gonzales plays emotively. Fingers fly over the keys, sometimes with such speed that one can’t actually see his digits. Looking like a rabbi in a dressing gown and slippers, Gonzales’ stage presence is commanding, and hilarious. The self-aggrandizing virtuoso claims himself as such, but does so with tongue firmly planted in cheek, and you forgive him for it because you know that he is, in fact, an absolute musical genius.

For David Andrew Sitek, a member of the unique and eclectic TV on The Radio and a producer, who has helped shape the sound of bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Liars, it’s easy to get typecast. Sitek was key in the creation of the “New Brooklyn” scene that first emerged ten years ago, but since then has been working hard to defy the expectations of his pedigree.
     Sitek’s self-proclaimed production style is a wrench in the system, and is determined to destroy all he deems boring in music. It’s an ethos Sitek has carried over to his new pop project, Maximum Balloon. The album marks a somewhat drastic shift into unapologetically fun dance music, a genre Sitek likes because it’s “more about the ability to get inside the song, not worry about other stuff, and not be self conscious”.
     Fortunately, Sitek didn’t have to explore this new territory alone. For Maximum Balloon, he enlisted the help of a different vocalist for each track, a structure that came about totally by accident. “I was kind of dicking around, which is how I started the song “Tiger”. I was just messing around, wrote lyrics, and I tried to sing it, which just sounded terrible. Then Aku [Orraca-Tetteh, from indie rock band Dragons of Zynth] came over, he sang it, it sounded incredible, and then I knew I couldn’t sing on any of the other songs,” says Sitek.

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Like its 2008 predecessor Alegranza!, the sophomore follow-up from El Guincho (real name Pablo Díaz-Reixa) plays like a celebration — a hybrid between Animal Collective’s brand of experimental pop and Brazil-entrenched tropicália. It’s surf rock for the southern hemisphere, a reverb-heavy set charged by an arsenal of drum samples both syncopated (“Bombay”) and full-bodied (“Soca Del Eclipse”). Of course, you may not understand a bit of what Díaz-Reixa is talking about unless you’re some degree of bilingual. Sung entirely in Spanish, Pop Negro’s muscle lies in the power of its rhythmic impressions. Every song has an audible clap, a smack that boosts the break in the beat — even the schizophrenic quickness of “(Chica-Oh) Drims”. Díaz-Reixa is a formidable frontman, and though his lyrical intonations can get lost in translation, his raw energy is eminent on album highlights “Lycra Mistral” and “Ghetto Fácil”. This is one the entire world should be able to get behind.

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Interpol’s 2002 debut, Turn on the Bright Lights, was a damning success. The band arrived too fully formed, setting expectations unattainably high for their subsequent follow-ups. Unattainable, though, because critics and fans are conditioned to expect a band to evolve, topping their previous achievements. Interpol do not evolve. They work instead to hone a singular sound, refining a melancholy mixture of post-punk and professional indie rock, and delving deeper into its exploration.
     Interpol has two key sounds: atmospheric and driving. On their last album, Our Love to Admire, the band dabbled in shoegaze, emphasizing its music at its most ethereal, but Interpol is leaner and more driving. The guitars and drums on “Lights” (see video, after the jump) are the hardest they’ve been since “Slow Hands” from the sophomore album, Antics.

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The North Carolina roots of brothers Brad and Phil Cook should explain the twang that emanates out of their “mini-album” but Heretofore is just as steeped in the ethereal folk of third member Joe Westerlund’s native Eau Claire, WI — home to like-minded songwriters Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and Peter Wolf Crier of Peter Pisano. Call it a difference of two halves. Heretofore’s opening title track starts slow but builds to a charging stomp, giving way to the breezy AM rock of “Carolina Days”. “Eagle” and “Volunteers” both come straight off the back porch, slip-slidin’ on simple descending guitar riffs (the former) and Appalachian banjo lines (the latter). By the time “Comprovisation for Connor Pass” — an eleven-minute foray into some deep, stoned abyss — rolls around, Megafaun’s moved from the porch back to Eau Claire. “Comprovisation” and harmony-heavy closer “Bonnie’s Song” are decidedly more laid-back and somehow even more beard-friendly than the front-end of this sufficient holdover to an unnamed LP set for release later this fall.

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Buy Megafaun records at Other Music or iTunes. Heretofore will be released September 14. After the jump, check out an intimate live performance of “Bonnie’s Song”.

What started out as a solo project of bare bedroom recordings by Ryan Lynch has garnered immediate blog buzz due to Lynch’s previous guitar work with Girls — the Bay Area band whose Elvis-Costello-channeling Album ranked among last year’s most acclaimed records. For this official debut EP, Lynch has been joined by vocalist/keyboardist Hannah Hunt. On “Run Like Hell for Leather”, the street-busker strumming that marked the earlier works is now augmented by both programmed and hand drums of a tropical flavor as well as boy-girl harmonies that call to mind the Vaselines. The title track further bolsters the otherwise stripped-down sound with buoyant synths, while “About My Girls” (stream below) boasts a whirling hook behind Hunt’s dreamy coos and Lynch’s wistful croon: “I just can’t seem to forget/About my girls”. After the jump, check out an acoustic performance of “Clawing Out at the Walls”, filmed in some idyllic yet subtly industrial hideaway — a setting that perfectly befits this band’s evolving aesthetic.

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Buy this at iTunes. And be sure to check out Dominant Legs as they open for Mystery Jets in New York and Los Angeles later this month.

Australian imports are usually packaged with a bolt of lightning — hard-charging rock explosions in the vein of AC/DC, Silverchair, and Wolfmother. With Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride, the Sydney duo of Aimee Nash and Scott Van Ryper emerges as the new face of Aussie rock: a drugged-up stew of distorted guitars fueled by the American bands Nash and Van Ryper toured alongside and brought into the studio to lend a hand on the recording. The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Ricky Maymi and Leah Shapiro and Peter Hayes of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are just three of the reasons that Buy the Ticket boasts such a West Coast neo-psychedelic drone. “Gone Without Feeling” and “To Never Know You” dig up Oregon rockers the Dandy Warhols via Nash’s ethereal vocals.

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It seems like Nathan Williams has emerged from his smoke-filled van and got his head into some real nice vitamin D. On King of the Beach, the Wavves’ leader ditches the under-produced garage-punk of his first two records for a cleaner and far more pop-oriented collection of songs, majorly influenced by Southern California. The entire album, like the best punk rock, is imbued with a casual, but never tossed-off, air of fun. The songs feature addictive ’80s hardcore-like vocal melodies and crisply produced guitars. It only took two or three plays before I had the epic riff of “Super Soaker”, and its sentimental foil, “Take on the World”, stuck in my head. For King, Williams indoctrinated a new rhythm section — drummer Billy Hayes and bass player Stephen Pope — who cut their teeth (and who knows what else) for the late Jay Reatard.

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In February, Definitive Jux effectively closed its doors from making any more music, and El-P — the progressive hip-hop label’s founder, boss hog, and chief curator — stepped down from his post as the NYC label’s artistic director, effectively ending an era in indie rap that owes more than its fair share to El-P’s hard-hitting style. As we all could have predicted though, you can take El out of the Jux but you can’t take the Jux out of El. With Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3, he’s created an industrial shakedown of laser shots (“Take You Out at the Ballgame”), howls (“Drunk with a Loaded Pistol”), and fresh-to-death remixes (Kidz in the Hall’s “Driving Down the Block” and Young Jeezy’s “I Got This”). Void of any vocals, the album stands as El-P’s answer to J Dilla’s modern classic, Donuts. The instrumental medley thrives on succinct transitions through “Whores: The Movie”, “Meanstreak (In 3 Parts)”, and “DMSC”, before launching into “Time Won’t Tell”, a slow-building but pristine, driving beat that evokes one-time label-mate RJD2’s The Horror. Best is saved for last, however, with the Mothership Connection of “Contagious Snippet” and the hard-hitting 1980s drum-hype behind “Eat My Garbage 2”. On Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3, El-P reminds us all where he came from — what comes next remains anybody’s guess.

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Buy this at iTunes. After the jump, check out an interview El-P did with Ford Models.