Blur’s Damon Albarn is known for one of his long-standing side projects, Gorillaz. Just a few days back, he brought his other side project, The Good, the Bad and the Queen into the spotlight for the 40th anniversary of Greenpeace with a rendition of Gorillaz’ “On Melancholy Hill.” Continue reading »
Riding high on the success of catchy single “Cough Syrup,” California indie act Young the Giant recently recorded an episode of MTV Unplugged. They shuffled a cover of Gorillaz‘s “Empire Ants” into their set, which airs tonight. Though they stay true to the structure of the track, the acoustic atmosphere gives it a newly introspective feel. Continue reading »
This Week on Bandcamp rounds up our favorite covers to hit the site in the past seven days.
This week’s Bandcamp spotlight takes a somewhat unusual focus: covers of imaginary artists. Three of the featured songs come from unusual origins, to say the least. One is a song by a cartoon band, one is a song performed by a creepy character in a whacko movie, and one is the text of an online comic strip put to music. Yeah, some strange stuff. Bookending this bizarre trifecta, the other two featured covers spotlight two new free tribute EPs.
For the first time, though, we’re actually bringing you ten Bandcamp covers. Focusing our main selection on the oddball left a lot of terrific, more traditional covers by the wayside. In a week with an unusually large number of quality releases, we just didn’t have the heart to leave them behind, so find bonus covers of Huey Lewis and the News, the Fauves, Bing Crosby, Johnny Cash, and the Ronettes below the main set. Continue reading »
Who knew Shakira was such an indie trendsetter? Ever since she took on the xx’s “Islands,” hip musicians have been tripping over themselves to follow suit. Admittedly, only the Pretty Reckless chose the same track, but still, we like to think Shaki’ had something to do with the xx cover flood.
The latest crop of xx covers comes from three unlikely sources. Over the weekend, Damon Albarn led Gorillaz on a piano-and-xylophone “Crystalised.” Watch a video of that one below. Then keep the dark mood going with OMD’s slow-jammed “VCR” and Various Production’s dubstepped-out “Infinity.” Continue reading »
Song of the Day posts one cool cover every morning. Catch up on past installments here.
Now, there’s nothing inherently difficult about getting through 32 songs in eight minutes. Try this: “Hey Jude, please please please roll over the rainbow and turn on the 4th red brick in the wall. Rattle and roll a muzzle of cheeseburger puppets to Alice’s house of the rising sonic exploder and sedate my shame and fortune to the blue suede siren. Small and humble homies gonna cut your hair down to the crossroads, but only the funk soul dandy compares 2 losing my rock lobster. No ‘G’ thang, no cry.”
There’s, that’s 32 songs and it took about twenty seconds [side challenge: how many can you identify?]. Getting through 32 songs and making it sound good though…well, that’s something else entirely. Fredrik Larsson aka. Freddegredde pulls it off in a speedy YouTube medley, nodding at viral videos alongside the rock and pop. View the video below, then peruse the full list of songs below the clip. Continue reading »