You keep my secrets, hope to die

Here is a little too much information about new New Zealand band, The Naked And Famous.

:: The Naked and Famous are Thom Powers and Alisa Xaya.

:: They met while studying at Auckland’s music school MAINZ, and promptly dropped out, formed a band, signed a record deal and recruited three other musicians.

:: Their name comes from a lyric in Tricky's song, The Tricky Kid, which they claim represents "cynicism towards the idea of being a 'rock star'".

:: Which is just as well, because they are neither naked nor famous.

:: Each member had a very different reaction to Ice Age 3.



:: Nepotism alert! Drummer Jess Wood went to school with Joseph from Temper Trap. The Naked And Famous later blagged a support slot on Temper Trap's Australian tour.

:: They sound similar to Passion Pit. Especially if by "similar to" you mean "exactly like".

:: You can buy a Naked And Famous t-shirt modelled by a young man with lip piercings and tattoos. It is 100% cotton with a double needle bottom hem and sleeve.

:: Their current single, Young Blood, debuted at number one in New Zealand, the first record to do so since Sean Kingston's Beautiful Girls in 2007. The band said they were "pleasantly surprised".

:: The song is getting a UK release on tiny trendy label Neon Gold on 6th September, if you'd like to hold a copy in your hands.

:: Here is the video.

The Naked And Famous - Young Blood


Want more? Here is their MySpace page.

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Lissie's unbearably cute mini-me video

Let's not beat around the bush here: I fucking love Lissie's debut album, Catching A Tiger.

I am making this unequivocal statement because, last time I wrote about Lissie, I compared her to Sheryl Crow, which some people interpreted as being negative (it wasn't).

The Californian singer's new single Cuckoo is the song that cemented that comparison for me. With chords as wide as the open road, and a whisky-soured rites of passage lyric, the chorus features the line: "I fell in love with being defiant, in a pick up truck that roared like a lion" - which isn't a million miles away from Crow's: "I spent the best part of my losing streak in an Army Jeep, from what I can recall" (from Run, Baby, Run).

The video picks up the older-but-not-necessarily-wiser theme, starring a miniature version of the bespeckled Lissie learning the art of rebellion.

Lissie - Cuckoo


The single is out on 30th August in the UK.

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How many factual errors can you squeeze into three paragraphs?

Let's ask the news desk at top British tabloid, The Mirror, who have been reporting on Kanye West's latest escapades.

1) Kanye West has not filmed a new video.
2) His latest single is called Power, not Mama's Boyfriend.
3) The footage The Mirror's crack team of reporters refers to appeared on YouTube, not Facebook.
4) It was, however, filmed during an impromptu performance Facebook's headquarters in Palo Alto, California. On a mobile phone.
5) There is no boardroom in the Spice Girls' Wannabe video.

Kanye West premieres Mama's Boyfriend at Facebook HQ


Full marks to everyone concerned.

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Feel free to skip the preamble and go straight to the video of the hot girl assassin

Being really good at your job must be a real pain in the backside. Not only would you be irritated by everyone else Constantly Doing It Wrong, but they'd ostracise you for making them look bad in front of the boss.

Mark "E" Everett has that problem. As the lynchpin of Eels, he's seen various band members come and go, all while churning out an endless stream of peerless indie-pop from his bedroom. The problem is, he's become almost too good at it.

Take, for example, his new song Spectacular Girl. If I had written this, I'd be over the moon. It's honest, heartwarming, catchy and tender - a perfect example of the suburban love song. But in the context of the Eels' past output - tracks like Susan's House or Your Lucky Day In Hell - it feels slight. Dashed off, even.

I suspect that the secrets of songwriting have, with years of practice, become second nature to E - to the extent that he can complete a song within hours of the initial idea popping into his head. Set up the drum machine, sketch out the verse, add a rise before the chorus, switch around the chord structure for the middle eight, double track the vocals, add strings for emphasis, tap it three times with the magic wand and, Izzy Wizzy Let's Get Busy, a finished single!

But if you come to rely too heavily on these tricks, you're in danger of stagnating. One of the most successful songwriters of the last 30 years, Jimmy Jam, says that he buys a new keyboard every time he starts working on a project. That way, he's forced onto the back foot. Learning new software and playing with new sounds leads to mistakes, which leads to discoveries, which leads to innovation.

(There's probably a lesson in there for any of us who've been stuck in the same job for too long...)

This is kinda sorta the message of the video for Spectacular Girl. It stars a secretary who is stifled by her job, and takes up night work that harnesses her hidden talents (one of those talents is the ability to change into skintight leather trousers during a 15-storey elevator ride, which is probably enough to get you your own reality show these days.)

It looks like this:

Eels - Spectacular Girl


The Eels' new album - Tomorrow Morning - is out on 24 August. It's their third in 12 months, which should really make Kate Bush feel ashamed of herself.

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Kylie won't leave the Scissor Sisters alone

Pint-sized pop pixie Kylie "Kylie" Minogue joined the Scissor Sisters on stage again last night in Melbourne.

Together, they performed the bluegrass country version of All The Lovers that the Scissors premiered on Radio One last month.

Kylie and the Scissor Sisters - All The Lovers


Teacher's note: I shall be forced to confiscate Ana Matronic's shaker unless she shows a marked improvement over the next term.

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New Hurts video for old Hurts song

The whole Hurts campaign has been a bit of a mystery to me. What is it with all the ballerinas? Why has Ingmar Bergman been exhumed to direct all of their videos? Why are they trying so desperately hard to look like the Pet Shop Boy Juniors?

Anyway, the grinding tedium of their self-important "image" aside, the band have some quite good songs. Wonderful Life is one of them. And, having received a limited release last year, it's coming out properly on 23 August.

This calls for a new video. It features a swimming pool, some architecture and - you guessed it - ballerinas.

The band sneakily allowed people to embed it earlier this week, then changed their minds, leading to lots of pop blogs with broken black boxes on their front page.

I'm not falling for that trick, so here's a picture of the artwork (caution: pretentious). If you click on it, you will be transported magically to the safe arms of YouTube to see the clip "in full".



If you liked that song (welcome back!) you should also try the superior Arthur Baker remix and the above-average Freemasons dance reswizzle.

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