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!
This quirky groove revives a song we didn’t realize how much we missed. The percussion, the harmonies, the rollicking piano all came together perfectly – to say nothing of the unexpected detours into “Funkytown” and “We Want the Funk!”
Last fall we enjoyed our first taste of Philly pop group Sweet Lights with their Travelling Wilburies cover. Now they return with an intimate duet on this beautiful Sharon Van Etten tune.
Earlier today Michigan songwriter Nick Strong released a covers EP on which he tackles Regina Spektor, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Rise Against. The whole thing’s worth a download, but the duet on this Ziggy Stardust gem shines brightest.
Old-time Kings of Leon fans criticized their breakout Only by the Night for abandoning grit in pursuit of arena-filling U2 sound. La Mujer Blandenga adds that grit back in spades, Trent Reznor-style. We think the lyrics are in Spanish, but amidst those layers of noise it’s hard to tell.
Specks of White performs MGMT’s big hit with a ukulele and melodica. It sounds exactly as you’d expect. Ninety seconds of goofy fun.
