Jan 312011
 

Last year’s remake of the Karate Kid came and went pretty quickly. If that franchise cash-in failed though, another recent Kid throwback continues to inspire nostalgia. It’s Bat for Lashes’ song “Daniel.” Though she’s never officially confirmed that song concerns the beloved 1984 film, on the cover of the single she sports a tattoo of protagonist Daniel LaRusso. The lyrics stray a bit from the plot, true, but this could still soundtrack a solid training montage.

Something for Kate singer Paul Dempsey mused on the Karate Kid connection when he covered the song yesterday for Australia’s Triple J radio. “If this song is from the perspective of Mr. Miyagi, it’s really creepy,” Dempsey notes. His falsetto keeps things more positive, bouncing off the understated “Daniel” backing chorus for a fun cover that veers away from the original’s pop production without losing the instantly-catchy groove. Continue reading »

Jan 312011
 

Sara Bareilles is no newcomer to covers. The Grammy-nominated chanteuse got her start in the UCLA acappella group Awaken, and later covered her own ballad “Gravity,” which she wrote for the group, on her debut album Careful Confessions. Late last year Bareilles brilliantly reinvented Beyoncé‘s raucous “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)” for Billboard.com’s Mashup Mondays series, giving a jazzy, coffee-house spin to the iconic R&B sizzler. Continue reading »

Jan 312011
 

Last we heard from HURTS, Kylie Minogue was covering their “Wonderful Life” by, surprisingly, stripping away many of the pop trappings. Catherine A.D. takes a similar approach on her version of “Better Than Love,” but layers on a wall of vocals instead of Minogue’s synthetic strings. The clubby pop beat becomes a grandiose choral explosion. Continue reading »

Jan 282011
 

This Week on Bandcamp rounds up our favorite covers to hit the site in the past seven days.

If you’re a music fan and haven’t discovered Bandcamp, you don’t know what you’re missing. Famous musicians like Sufjan Stevens and Amanda Palmer have distributed new albums through the site, sure, but the true beauty lies in the untold number of unsigned artists putting up their work for the world to, hopefully, discover. The site allows artists to price their work as they see fit, which means one thing: free (and legal) music!

To celebrate that, today we launch a new series. Every week we’ll pore over the newest Bandcamp releases and find our five favorite covers. They’re all under-the-radar gems and they’re all free. This first week, we dug up great covers of Wild Cherry, Sharon Van Etten, David Bowie, MGMT, and Kings of Leon. Check ’em out below and let us know what you think in the comments! Continue reading »

Jan 282011
 

Every now and again a cover appears in our inbox that knocks us sideways. Often such recordings showcase performances of under-covered gems or culturally relevant songs (current hits, artist just died, etc). “Over the Rainbow” falls about as far outside those guidelines as you can get. Hell, it was the second most covered song of 2010! But of the 4,241 versions for sale on Amazon, I guarantee none sound like this. Continue reading »

Jan 282011
 

Hip-hop and cello may seem like strange bedfellows to most, but not to the Portland Cello Project. The group, who describe themselves as an “amorphous collective,” formed in 2007 and record for Kill Rock Stars – home to The Decemberists, Gossip and Bikini Kill. They perform a mixture of originals and genre-crossing orchestral covers. And it doesn’t get much more genre-crossing than this. Continue reading »