Foals post official music video for "Bad Habit" off their third album Holy Fire

Formed in Oxford, England, by longtime friends Yannis Philippakis (guitar) and Jack Bevan (drums), along with Andrew Mears on vocals, guitarist Jimmy Smith, and bassist Walter Gervers, Foals — whose name is a play on the etymology of Philippakis' name — began as a way to protest against the proggier sounds that were both popular in Oxford and in Philippakis and Bevan's former band, the Edmund Fitzgerald. After releasing the single "Try This on Your Piano" in 2006, Mears left Foals in order to more fully concentrate on his other group, Youthmovies (formerly Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies), and Philippakis — who had lived until he was seven in a tiny Grecian village — added the role of lead vocals to his guitar-playing duties. Edwin Congreave, a fellow Oxford student the frontman had met when they were both working at the same bar, and who introduced the group to techno, soon joined in on keyboards, despite the fact he had never played the instrument before — nor ever been in a band — and the full lineup of Foals was completed. The quintet worked on perfecting its poppy, jittery, upbeat, math rock/post-punk sound by playing house parties around the area, and soon the group was signed to Transgressive Records, who released the singles "Hummer" and "Mathletics" in April and August of 2007, respectively. Foals picked up quite a buzz in the U.K., and in June 2007 they went to New York to record their debut album under the guidance of producer and TV on the Radio guitarist Dave Sitek. The sessions went well, but the bandmembers ended up not being happy with the final mix, choosing instead to remix it themselves, and issuing the full-length, Antidotes — which, incidentally, included neither "Hummer" nor "Mathletics" — in March of 2008, while Sub Pop picked up the album in the U.S. and gave it an April release, adding the two neglected singles as bonus tracks. Two years later the band returned with their sophomore album, Total Life Forever, released by Transgressive Records. After having songs appear on shows like Entourage and Misfits, the band returned in 2013 with their third album, the expansive and more balanced Holy Fire.

Jay-Z‘s highly anticipated 2013 release, Magna Carta Holy Grail, was announced during Game 5 of the NBA Finals. The 2 minute commercial showcased an in depth behind the scenes look at the creation of the new album. Samsung’s Galaxy 4 presented the piece with cameos by legendary producers including Rick Ruben, Pharrell Williams, Timbaland, Jamie XX, and Swizz Beatz.

While close friend and confidant Kanye West‘s new album Yeezus just leaked, the sounds presented during this Samsung commercial showcased snippets of an album that seemingly holds the potential to shut down the competition for good.

The all black and white commercial presented Jay-Z professing that ”We need to rewrite the rules” as the struggle between navigating between success, failures, and passion are magnified more so than ever for aspiring entrepreneurs and artists.

The revolutionary new album will debut to fans around the world on July 4, 2013. The first one million Samsung Galaxy SIII, Galaxy S4, and Galaxy Note 2 owners will receive the album for free.

The customized app will feature an unprecedented look at the behind the scenes making of the album as well as personal stories of inspiration from Jay-Z. --via Elite Daily.

Toronto pop band Eleven Past One have released their second single called "Tonight's The Night" and premiered a music video for it on MuchMusic Tuesday. Check out the video below!

From now until June 17th you can stream Sigur Ros' new album 'Kveikur' for free at Amazon.com

The XX will release 'Fiction' on July 15 as the latest cut to be lifted from their second studio album Coexist.

The clip was directed by Young Replicant and was shot in Palm Springs, USA during the band's recent headline tour across North America. It features Oliver Sim performing the track while walking out of a house and dancing outdoors under a full moon.

'Fiction' will be available on 7" vinyl and download and will also include B-side 'Together', which features as the end-credits track in the Great Gatsby film. The XX are currently on their 'Night + Day' tour, which will visit Hatfield House in the UK on June 22.

In light of recent world-headlining news, Toronto punk rock band Shit From Hell (SFH for short) has released a song called "Mayor On Crack" which is quickly spreading across the social mediasphere. 

The band has been called a lot of things. That includes: “The most dead-on accurate band name of all time;” “Drooling delinquents in the bodies of bitter, fat middle-aged doucherinos;” and “Sounding not quite as good as a jet-engine sucking a family of raccoons through the intake, but still better than Sum 41.”

Call them whatever you want, just don’t call them at dinner time pretending to be Elections Canada.

SFH came together in 2005 after a couple of beer-soaked rehearsals in an East Toronto industrial park. Known as “The Fury’s Hour Sessions,” these gatherings revealed that one day, with enough liquor, anger, divorce, betrayal, neglected-children, riot-police confrontations, heart surgery, failed dreams, internecine bickering, on-stage electrocutions, and Facebook-and-Jesus songs, they could be a decent band. And so began that peculiar journey.

SFH released its eponymous debut later that year, followed up by Wheel of Wow in 2007. Both albums have sold literally dozens of units and have “gone styrofoam” according to record industry sales figures.

Bassist/singer Winkie (ex Social Blemishes, Hot Nasties) and guitarist/singer The Rayman were joined in 2008 by new guitarist/singer Ritalin Boy (ex The Thin Line, Dancing Wu Li Masters), followed in 2009 by new drummer Davey Snot. Through their shared love of chicken wings and Captain Beefheart, and with an uncharacteristic wave of ambition, the band greatly improved the quality of their decibels and melodic hooks in their old-school punk anthems.

SFH also set out to sharpen its live chops, relying more on testicular intensity, and less on strippers, gin and lager, to make their shows memorable. Notable gigs included backing punk-rock legends Teeenage Head, as well as supporting that band’s singer Frankie Venom in his very last live show before succumbing to cancer. The band also regularly holds court on stage at Toronto’s punk Mecca the Bovine Sex Club, in part thanks to a thumbs-up from SFH fan and Replacements/Guns N Roses bassist Tommy Stinson (who has been known to run their merch table) and other counter-culture tastelessness-makers like Kenny Hotz, Peter Gatien and Julie Pacino who truly love the way they smell. 

An abundance of new songs have flowed through the band’s fingers, lungs and loins on everything from sex-starved single mothers to idiotic police aggression during the G20 summit. They are laid out, raw and uncensored, on Why Do You Hate Me?, SFH’s third album, which the band lovingly refers to as “the one that’s finally gonna get us out of this shit-hole town.” With an average age of 47, it’s probably their last shot.

SFH will embark on an extensive tour of North America if, by some miracle, their single becomes such a huge hit that it can pay for its band members’ spousal and child-support obligations, and car-loan payments.

Read their full biography at facebook.com

It’s been awhile since music has had a rebellious voice. Not since Rage Against the Machine put their fist in the air, in the land of hypocrisy has there been such an unmitigated combustion of sonic ferocity fueled by relentless passion and intrepid ideology. At least not until letlive. came along...  

LA’s volatile four-piece rock band fanned the flames of discontent with their critically praised record, Fake History, for a new generation of fans three years ago, and today have announced their long-awaited return with one of the year’s most anticipated albums, The Blackest Beautiful, due out on July 9th via Epitaph Records.  letlive. has premiered their first new song, “Banshee (Ghost Fame),” in the form of a powerful video today.  Additionally, fans who pre-order The Blackest Beautiful starting today at letlivestore.com will receive an instant download of “Banshee (Ghost Fame).”

“This song explores the tragic humor in entertainment as an industry as opposed to an art,” explainsletlive.’s inimitable vocalist Jason Aalon Butler.  “Sonically this track was a pretty suitable representation of the record's sonic spectrum.  We also employed some elements of groove that we have always been fans of.”

Named #1 on Kerrang!’s list of “The 50 Greatest Rockstars in The World Today,” Jason Butler, along with cohorts Ryan Jay Johnson (bass), Jean Nascimento (guitar) and Jeff Sahyoun (guitar), organically meld hardcore, punk, metal and even elements of jazz and R&B, on The Blackest Beautiful, creating a progressive, indelible sound that walks the line between aggressive and melodic and crosses a gamut of genres with an intensity that’s rarely found in music today.  

“The mindset was certainly a holistic one when regarding this record,” Butler adds.  “The vibe developed on its own as we wrote it.  While we certainly indulged particular tastes, stylistically, as individuals, we made sure that the product culminated as something we could all enjoy. Essentially we all got to explore elements we had always wanted to and somehow found a way to marry them tastefully on one album.”

Self-produced with the help of longtime co-conspirator Kit Walters and mixed by pop guru Stephen George (Mary J Blige, Michael Jackson), The Blackest Beautiful features eleven politically, socially and personally conscious songs like “The Priest and Used Cars,” which refers the tragic costs of poisonous zeal, “Virgin Dirt,” about self-sabotaging relationships, and “27 Club,” a personal tale of living life selflessly or selfishly.  

Like those that paved the path before them, Rage Against the Machine, Deftones, Mars Volta, At the Drive In, etc., letlive. transcend passing trends and scenes with a focus that is entirely devoted to their art and furthering their creativity through music. The Blackest Beautiful is their latest creation, which will undoubtedly be celebrated for years to come.

After two years on the road touring 20 countries, including performances at Download, Reading & Leeds, Soundwave, Pukkelpop, Orion Fest and tours with Deftones in both Europe and Australia, letlive. is ready to hit the road once again, this time in support of The Blackest Beautiful, leaving everything they’ve got on the stage this summer on the Vans Warped Tour.

Daft Punk is back with their first studio album since Human After All (2005) and if anyone thought that the robots were passé and their dance music sounding different now will be very regretful. Random Access Memories (2013) is a scrawling 13 track odyssey that is almost 75 minutes long. It harkens back to the disco and rock era straight out of 1970’s California, albeit with the usual French spacey-ness and out of this world texture the duo is known for.

He tells his tale of growing up in Germany and going to the local discotheques that influenced the sound he wanted to be apart of. He realized that the sound of the future was synthesizer – which is where the Robots enter. “I know the synthesizer, why don’t I use the synthesizer which is the sound of the future. /  And I didn't have any idea what to do but I knew I needed a click so we put a click on the 24 track which then was synched to the Moog modular. / I knew that it could be a sound of the future but I didn’t realize how much impact it would be.” A pulsing click enters with a haunting Transylvanian dance beat which makes you want to close your eyes as you float out of this airspace in a UFO ship with the pioneer and the masters. 

Nile Rogers, the Chic front man, contributes his fantastic disco era guitar playing to give “Life Back To Music”, “Lose Yourself To Dance” and the first single “Get Lucky”. Pharrell Williams of Neptunes and N.E.R.D. fame also provides vocals to the last two of the aforementioned songs. His soaring falsetto on first single “Get Lucky”, although widely thought to be a hook-up tune, actually encourages finding the power of love with that special someone; holding them close and dancing the night away. It may be the most typical Daft Punk song, with a killer beat and easy to chant lyrics.

At almost an hour and a half some songs seem to drag on a bit, the average track being over 5 minutes. At around the 45-minute mark you realize you are only half way through the album, which comes as both a blessing and a curse. 

Rewarded are the troopers, as some of the best songs come later on, with appearances from; Feist collaborator Chilly Gonzales, French producer DJ Falcon, Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas and Animal Collective drummer and singer Panda Bear.

Panda Bear appears on “Doin’ It Right”, a sparse drum and bass beat with typical Daft Punk robotic vocoder singing behind Panda Bear’s layered vocals. A simple head nodding song that makes you feel good about your existence in their paradise. 

Some songs could have been trimmed, but each one as a whole has very few issues to nitpick about, since the people who would have been most critical are the duo themselves. They were the harshest scrutinizers to the work, ensuring that the right microphones were used and spent weeks at a time searching for the “sound” they were looking for. 

To accompany the release of the album the band produced a series of videos entitled “The Collaborator's” highlighting all the most important of the albums participants; from talking about the history of their own careers to how they came to work with the masked duo. Fitting since the music they are emulating came from an era when it didn’t matter what your image was, only if you could make something of substance. 

The album concludes with “Contact” which winds you up like a top so fast and blasts you off while you leave all your earthly belongings behind. Just enjoy the ride, and oh, don’t forget to dance while you’re at it.  

Top Tracks: Giorgio By Moroder, Get Lucky, Touch
Similar Artists: MSTRKRFT, Kraftwerk, Devo

--by Dakota Arsenault

We are giving away a pair of tickets to see Bernhoft and guests on June 5th, 2013 at Virgin Mobile Mod Club! (Tickets on sale now)

Since releasing his sophomore album Solidarity Breaks in early 2011, Norwegian retro-soul singer/multi-instrumentalist Bernhoft has thrilled crowds around the world with his stripped-down yet amped-up one-man-band act. Largely on the strength of his looping-enhanced and wonder-inspiring live show, Bernhoft racked up 250,000 sales of Solidarity Breaks and earned more than three million views for “C’Mon Talk” (a beatbox-infused, acoustic-guitar-laced single that Bernhoft performed during his September 2011 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show). With his irresistibly of-the-moment approach to classic R&B and soul, Bernhoft also nabbed the Best Artist and Best Male Artist of the Year awards at the 2012 Spellemannprisen, which are the equivalent to the GRAMMYs in Norway. Now, the former frontman of acclaimed alt-rock band Span is returning to the U.S. with an unforgettable live performance in which his ingenuity in looping magically reproduces the sound, feel, and energy of a complete band. [Read more at http://bernhoft.org/biography]

ENTER & WIN:

1. Follow @livemusicTO on Twitter
2. Hit the Retweet button on this message
3. That's it!

Contest closes:
June 3rd, 2013

Prize courtesy of Live Nation. 2 winners will be selected by random draw, awarded 2 passes each to the show, announced June 3, 2013 via Twitter. Winners must be 19+, following livemusicTO and must retweet contest message in order to enter. Winners are responsible for their own transportation to/from the venue. Thanks to all entries, good luck!

Billboard reports pop-rock quartet Forever The Sickest Kids will return on June 25 with new album "J.A.C.K.," and after previewing the full-length with the single "Chin Up Kid," the Dallas group has offered another glimpse at its third studio effort. "Nice To Meet You" will be released digitally on Tuesday (May 28), but hear the song now and watch its lyric video below.

On "Nice To Meet You," frontman Jonathan Cook, drummer Kyle Burns, bassist/vocalist Austin Bello and guitarist/vocalist Caleb Turman offers a scathing take on the grim reality of the American news cycle, and laugh at myths about rock being dead and cell phones being dangerous. "I've heard a lot of things, but I've seen nothing!" Cook declares on the hook.

"'Nice to Meet You' was a song we wrote about honest feelings about how the media is so filled with negativity nowadays," explains Cook. "We live in the greatest country in the world and these lyrics are about how our country's stereotypes are perceived by outsiders looking in."

Forever The Sickest Kids will support "J.A.C.K." on the 2013 Vans Warped Tour, marking their fourth time on the annual trek. The album was produced by Mike Green (Paramore, New Found Glory) and marks their debut on Fearless Records.

What do you think of "Nice To Meet You"? Share your thoughts in the comments section.