The New Division began as a college dorm room project for songwriter John Kunkel back in 2005. After moving from Uruguay (where he resided for 18 years) to Southern California. Kunkel began experimenting with synthesizers after being heavily influenced by the sounds of Joy Division, New Order, and Depeche Mode. 
Originally, the name “New Division” was meant as an artist working title for songs that would never be released.

The New Division - Festival

With only one available song to date, NY duo Sunvisor is already called the new big chillwave thing. Matt Buszko and Anthony Gerbino are about to release their debut EP this summer, so stay tuned. If it’s gonna be similar to this beautiful shimmering song Sky Dive, we’d better keep place for them in our year’s top lists.

Sunvisor - Over And Under

Chad Valley – the alias of Hugo Manuel – is part of the same Oxford collective, Blessing Force, that Fixers belong to, and there is a similar feeling of 60s music being given a shimmery modern electronic makeover. But maybe because there’s just one of him he is able to give the project greater focus; there is no dilution, or sense of boxes being ticked, with Chad Valley – it’s just one idea, gloriously stretched out over four tracks on his sublime self-titled debut EP; one long wave of luxuriant sound after another.

Chad Valley - Shell Suite

Butcher Blades are Goldendelicious and Grammaticalapple, one bent stack of exotica and boogaloo records, two keyboards and a guitar, the wet tongue of three am wrapped around some skin tight disco, four espressos and five strong whisky sours, a six hour marathon of espionage films, and seven days a week making dance music for strangers, living in a factory and dreaming of the Bermuda Triangle.

Butcher Blades - The Swan Machine

When you think of Minneapolis' musical legacy, two things probably come to mind: fast, brawny punk-infused rock (the Replacements, Hüsker Dü) and, well, Prince. Even if you expanded those horizons to include alt-hip-hop acts like Atmosphere and P.O.S., you still wouldn't find much in the way of throbbing, Balearic-leaning electro. It's surprising, then, to find out that Elite Gymnastics call the chilly terrain of one of Minnesota's Twin Cities home, especially when listening to "Is This on Me?", a highlight from the duo's Real Friends EP. Then again, if you're going to be making music in such a climate, you might as well arm yourself with a warm pulse, as well as plenty of sunshine samples and high-pitched chimes that twinkle like an ice castle bathed in soft light. As the summer months heat up, "Is This on Me?" somehow manages to feel like a blast of cool air while keeping things appropriately warm.

elite gymnastics - o m a m o r i

HVZEL is an electronic musician based in Washington, DC.

HVZEL - Skateboard

Glowbug is the dance/electronic side-project of Bellingham, WA artist Daniel Anderson, who also fronts The Ghost and the Grace and is one-half of the band Idiot Pilot. The project originally started in October 2010 when Daniel attempted an experiment of writing, recording, mastering and releasing an EP of new material within three days; the final product being the first digital EP Awful Scary, Yes, Very. The following two months saw the release of two more EPs; Silian Rail, and Displacer Beast. In 2011, Glowbug released their debut LP, Mr. Plastic. Glowbug also includes live members Christopher Newton, Brittany Hurley and Hanna Adams.

Glowbug - Where Is My Mind (Pixies Cover)

What is wallpaper? It decorates our rooms, covers our walls, and for the most part goes unnoticed. It is the backdrop of our lives, just like today’s pop music. It lingers in the background, being played at gentle volumes in restaurants, elevators, gyms, etc. That’s what Eric Frederic of Hyphy R&B satire act Wallpaper wanted to address. Slinging CDRs and rocking house parties, Wallpaper has become a gold plated name in the San Francisco Bay Area underground.

Wallpaper - Indian Summer

FOR MORE DOWNLOADS GO TO beachesbeaches.bandcamp.com 
myspace.com/beachesbeaches

BeachesBeaches - Ready Now

I'm Ruddy.
19. Virginia.
I make music as Ruddyp and Heavy Deer
I like cats.

Ruddyp - Eyebrows

Joywave is a Rochester, NY indie pop band. The band released its first single “Golden State” on January 4th, 2011 via its website (joywavemusic.com), and followed up with their “77777” mixtape in March 2011. The mixtape is a complex arrangement of original works, covers, and sample based songs featuring various stems combined with Daniel Armbruster’s vocals.

Joywave - Anemone

Active since April 2010, Blackbird Blackbird (Formerly Bye Bye Blackbird), a.k.a. Mikey Sanders, is a dream pop artist from San Francisco, CA. 

Blackbird Blackbird - Float On (Modest Mouse Cover)

When Clive Tanaka finally found his voice, he ended a family tradition of silence that stretched back half a century.

For 11 years, Clive almost never left his room in his family’s home outside of Sapporo on Hokkaido, Japan’s huge northern island. “I was hikikomori,” Clive explains, one of almost a million boys and young men in Japan who shut themselves away and withdraw from society. In Clive’s case, he stopped going to school and retreated to his room after sustained episodes of vicious hazing and harassment by older students, a chronic problem in Japanese public schools.

But even before his own withdrawal when he was 14, Clive had first-hand experience of what silence and isolation was like. “My grandfather was a Soviet prisoner of war until 1949. He was a very young soldier in the [Japanese] army in Manchuria towards the end of the Pacific War [World War II] and was a POW many years longer than he was a soldier.” He married when he returned and seemed OK. But while watching the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, he saw the Soviet Union flag carried by Russian athletes, and something snapped. He did not speak another word for 20 years.

When Clive became hikikomori in 1991, he had no computer or Internet for amusement, only books and magazines that his parents would leave by his door, on a tray with his meals, and television. One day, his older sister put in front of his door a big box of her cast-off magnetic tape cassettes of 70’s and 80’s disco music. At night, Clive’s family heard him dancing and singing along. Which gave his mother an idea. One New Year’s Day, his mother left a Yamaha DX7 keyboard outside his room. As a young boy, Clive had learned to play the violin and recorder through the Suzuki method. Alone, he taught himself how to play the piano keyboard, using only the instruction manual. And Clive started writing his own music. He credits the music with helping him gradually emerge from isolation in 2002, although he remains painfully shy.

Some listeners describe Clive’s music as retro, reminiscent of Giorgio Moroder, Cerrone, ABBA, Andy Gibb, Paradise Frame, Zapp & Roger, Toto, Grandmaster Flash, Fatback, and Kool & The Gang. One reason may be because of the influence of his sister’s tape cassettes. “I played them over and over and over, and it started to bother my sister and my parents. Japanese houses have thin walls so even when I turned the volume down, it annoyed them. My sister slipped a note under the door that said, ‘I will buy you some current popular rock music if you will just please stop playing my old cassettes! I didn’t mind hearing those songs the first thousand times but I don’t like them anymore.’ The next day, there was a pair of headphones outside my door!”

Clive Tanaka y su orquesta - I Want You (So Bad)

Michael Silver (aka CFCF) is one of those rare talents to whom pop sensibility seems to be second nature. The Montreal native has been making music in his bedroom since he was 12 years old, but it’s only over the past year or so that the rest of the world has been able to share in his pop experiments. Despite having just exited his teenage years, CFCF has a musical depth that constantly surprises his elders with influences ranging from Jellybean and Pete Rock to Todd Rundgren and Fleetwood Mac.

CFCF - Letters Home (Memoryhouse Remix)

With Diamond Messages and very few others, the music and the name are perfectly synchronized. These songs are indeed crystalline particles, encoded and electrified to convey and captivate. 
- Casket Crash Vigil

Diamond Messages - Liquid Summer

Active Child
AlunaGeorge
Apparat
Arcade Fire
Armin van Buuren 
Arrange
ASTR
Astronauts, etc.
Azealia Banks
Baauer 
Basement Jaxx
Baths
Bag Raiders 
BeachesBeaches
Bear In Heaven
Beach House
Beyoncé
Björk
Blackbird Blackbird
Bloc Party
Bombay Bicycle Club
Bonobo
Born Gold
Broken Bells
Calvin Harris
Caribou
Cary Brothers
CATHEDRALS
ceo
CFCF
Chad Valley
Chela
CHVRCHES
Clive Tanaka y su orquesta
CocoRosie
Crystal Castles
Crystal Fighters
Cut Copy
Diamond Messages
Discovery
Ellie Goulding
Empire of the Sun
Familjen
Fever Ray
Fixers
Foals
Fool's Gold
Frank Ocean 
Freelance Whales
French Horn Rebellion & Savoir Adore
Friendly Fires
Gallant
Gang Gang Dance
Gardens & Villa
Gayngs
Germany Germany
Gold Fields
Gold Panda
Gorillaz
Grimes
Heavenly Beat
The Holidays
Hot Chip
Hundred Waters
James Blake
JaymesYoung
Junior Boys
Justin Timberlake
Katy Perry
Kings Of Leon
Klaxons
Kleerup
The Knife
Kyle Andrews
Local Natives
Lorde
Lydia
Lykke Li
M.I.A.
M83
Metronomy
Mew
MGMT
Miami Horror
Miike Snow
Millionyoung
MNDR
Mute Math
NIVA
Painted Palms
Patrick Wolf
Peter Bjorn and John
Phantogram
Phoenix
Pinback
Pinback
Polica
Purity Ring
RAC
Roosevelt
Röyksopp
Santigold
Sébastien Tellier
Sia
Sir Sly
Sleigh Bells
Small Black
Solange
St. Lucia
Starfucker
Steffaloo
STRFKR
Sufjan Stevens
Surfer Blood
Tanlines
The Temper Trap
Temples
The Tough Alliance
Twin Shadow
Two Door Cinema Club 
Tycho
Uffie
The Vaccines
Vampire Weekend
Washed Out
The Weeknd
White Sea
Willow Beats
The xx
Yeasayer
You Say Party! We Say Die!
Young Galaxy
Zedd
30 Seconds To Mars


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