Under the Radar shines a light on lesser-known cover artists. If you’re not listening to these folks, you should. Catch up on past installments here.

Susanne Mohle and Pete Klein are Night Bird, a jazz-inflected Deutschland duo who take popular songs and transform them into tunes that fit right into any smoky basement with a cover charge. It’s not an uncommon approach, but the end results are a lot rarer – quality performances that don’t leave you pining for the original hits by the original artists.
Continue reading »

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart released a cover of The Magnetic Fields’ “Jeremy”, part of a 7” with a companion cover, “My Life is Wrong” by East River Pipe. Peggy Wang, vocalist and keyboard player for the New York indie band, released a lengthy, personal and articulate post on the band’s tumblr, affording fans a personal explanation for the cover. Wang writes, “The Magnetic Fields might have been the last band I ever unconditionally loved without ever stopping to try to understand why – just the kind of love story I hoped to one day live through.” Continue reading »

Triple J, an Australian radio station, has a covers show called “Like a Version,” which is a spectacular name for anything covers related. The Shins recently appeared on the show where they covered “Andrew in Drag” from the Magnetic FieldsLove at the Bottom of the Sea. Continue reading »

A little less than a year ago, we over here at Cover Me couldn’t help but gush over Catherine A.D.’s delicate, weep-inducing take on Bon Iver‘s “The Wolves (Act I and II).” Since then, Cover Me has stalked her page and covered five of her covers. Needless to say we’re fans and couldn’t be more excited for her next covers release. Between finishing up at university and her debut full length album that’s due out this winter, Catherine A.D. found some time to put together all of her reworkings and covers for her album Reprise. Continue reading »

We’ve said it before here at Cover Me, and we’re likely to say it again: Stephin Merritt has put a serious dent in creating a new American songbook without even really seeming to try that hard. The man throws pure poetry at listeners like candy from a firetruck at a fourth-of-July parade. Continue reading »

Jude Moses lives in the hills of North Carolina, and for his cover of The Magnetic Fields‘ classic “The Book of Love” he took advantage of the area’s rural beauty and shot the video beside the famous Blue Ridge Parkway. Also famously covered by Peter Gabriel, the song’s simple elegance matches the tranquil setting nicely. Continue reading »

Twelve years ago today, the Magnetic Fields released 69 Love Songs. Initially conceived as a theatrical revue performed by drag queens, 69 Love Songs took a different status entirely as a beloved pillar of indie pop. Though hardly a best-seller then or now, it retains a certain mystique as an album one could devote years to (witness this book or this project documenting each song in graphic form). Everything Stephin Merritt had been building with the Magnetic Fields over the previous six albums came to fruition here and then some.

Sprawling even by Merritt’s standards, 69 Love Songs covers a mind-boggling array of genres. So, in honor of its anniversary, we’ve selected a set of 12 covers that do the same. Some songs will make you dance; others will make you weep. It’s a barely-coherent smorgasbord of sounds, sources, and interpretations. Given the source material, that seems appropriate. Continue reading »

Quickies rounds up new can’t-miss covers. Download ‘em below.

San Francisco indie-pop purveyors Lemonade began making blog buzz with last year’s Pure Moods EP. Now they dig up “The Place Where You Belong,” making a lively jam of the 1994 Shai single everyone vividly remembers. Wait, don’t tell us you forgot the Beverly Hills Cop III soundtrack…
MP3: Lemonade – The Place Where You Belong (Shai cover) Continue reading »

© 2012 Cover Me. All rights reserved. Creative Commons License About | Contact | Staff | Subscribe | Write For Us Suffusion WordPress theme by Sayontan Sinha