A great tip from Lismore’s email blast. The two bands just played Friday at the Delancy in NYC. I can’t stop listening to the 12″ from Thieves Like Us. This A-side plays like a lost track from the Trainspotting soundtrack. A little New Order, a little Daft Punk, a lot of dance floor fun. A tribute to tripping. 3hive does not condone illegal drug use (at least not before breakfast), but we fully support dropping beats that induce body moving euphoria. Tune into these two Swedes and a Yankee and let yourself go.
For those of you keeping score at home, this post marks 3hive’s 1,000th entry. Make some noise!
I’ve been holding out on posting this one…holding out for the day when L.A.O.S.’s brilliant (not to mention educational!) “Panda Style” single becomes available to the masses—or to me, at least. Alas, it’s not widely available in any format and I can’t, according to the 3hive Oath, keep awesome free MP3 downloads to myself. L.A.O.S. (Large Amount of Soul) are a drum ‘n’ bass trio from Helsinki with a great ear for deep hooks, cheeky samples, and beats that won’t quit. “Drowning Deep Inside Your Soul” is a good taste of their sound. However, if you want to hear “Panda Style” you can stream it from their MySpace page, or download the DJ Abraham (1/3 of L.A.O.S.) 
We’re pushing three years serving music fans by “sharing” from artists and frankly it’s time we give back to the music makers. Introducing 
Is Denmark the new Sweden? But borders aren’t important. We here at 3hive love all Scandanavians, especially the ones who have a way with a guitar. The Black Antipodes claim Sonic Youth, The Stokes, and Interpol, among others, as influences, and it’s easy to hear all three in “Black Coffee and Pie.” My grandmother-in-law, a full Dane, if she were still here, would be so pleased.
“Her hips were sharp in the dark / in a park on N. Clark”
Clare Burson is often compared to Lucinda Williams, so clearly she’s got something good going on. The Nashville-based Burson’s very personal tales, often of searching or longing, are hypnotic and gritty and completely endearing. As evidenced by the number of free downloads, she’s a generous soul as well, offering up for easy access about half the body of her recorded work. My favorites are from her full-length album The In-Between, on which her country roots are most obvious. Like several other 3hive picks, Burson’s music has been used in a hip TV show (Six Degrees on ABC? If it’s not Dora the Explorer I don’t know about it) so we wish her luck in landing a big fat record deal and implore her to remember the good old days of sharing the sharing.
Austin-based quartet, She, Sir recently built a lovely wall-of-sound EP, stacked with layers upon layers of guitars, modal harmonies, and hushed melodies. With the subtle hooks and deep atmospherics of Who Can’t Say Yes, She, Sir drop pop music to an even vaguer level than Loveless. She, Sir beautifully fractures music for the next generation of dream-pop connoisseurs.
Not only do Nom de Guerre play some wonderful pop music, but they offer perhaps the best band shirts ever offered for sale by a band: tailor-made, double cuff dress shirts designed by the bassist for measley 70 euros! Other offers available for purchase include your name in a song, an entire song about you, and even an entire album about you. If only I were the Russian billionaire with some spare cash whom Nom de Guerre is hoping to court, I’d buy Blackburn Rovers, then buy half the Chelsea squad (and no, not Lampard) and have them warm the Blackburn bench cause that other Russian billionaire must be getting bored by now, and then have Nom de Guerre write albums about each member of my family. But in laying out the required payment, I would insist on the formula of “So Long Sister”: dirty bass, swliring keyboards, and plenty of la la’s and other sing-along harmonies. Oh, and some of those dress shirts. What is the dollar-to-euro exchange rate these days anyway?
Princeton is not from Princeton. I have my doubts that the floppy-headed Santa Monica twins and their best friend, who recorded their first E.P. in London while on study-abroad programs, have ever set foot in New Jersey. They claim such classic Brit-pop songwriters Ray Davies and Rod Argent as influences, and their four-track stylings, carefree lyrical associations and bookish sensibilities also bring to mind Ben Lee, Lou Barlow, Stephen Malkmus, and Jonathan Richman. It takes more than cleverness to write a song about a pirate that doesn’t sound like a Broadway musical, or to sing a travelogue of an Asian city that doesn’t descend into kitsch. But Princeton does it well — with organs, acoustic guitar, and sweet, youthfully knowing vocals. Just don’t ask me which twin is singing.
Blissed-out ambient pop from Vancouver. (How many times can we say that it seems all good things come from Canada?) I don’t know if there really is a scientific perpetual dream theory, but if you come up with some ideas of what the soundtrack to it would be, the band probably comes close. If you like what you hear and want to grab more free stuff, you can download their whole