BOAT is prepared to release their fourth album, Dress Like Your Idols, in March and we have here the first single from that album. The song is called “(I’ll Beat My Chest Like) King Kong” and it maintains BOAT’s wild throaty vocals, packed with a seemingly self-deprecating sarcasm and a penchant toward pop culture. It maintains those rockin’ guitar riffs and bouncy percussion. It maintains all those lovable rock hooks, catchy as all hell. Yet it’s slightly different from their past three releases — it’s more …

World Atlas is slated to give us their self-titled EP early next month on Magic Marker Records. The band is joined by Fred Thomas (Saturday Looks Good To Me) on guitar and The Umbrella Girls on hand-claps, tambourines and back-up vocals. Fronted ultimately by Brian Groux on vocals and guitar, World Atlas is what you’d expect from a band on Magic Marker — they dig The Smiths and Velvet Underground, and list as influences the various indie-pop and twee sub-cultures.

Hello Seahorse! creates honest, lovable pop in the vein of Mates Of State. The trio from Mexico City is centered around light, clean keyboard riffs, soft bass lines and female-fronted vocals. The music is ingenuous and unassuming. There’s no typical pretensions here, simply pleasant pop songs. “Won’t Say Anything” will surprise you with its purity, and abash you for your lack innocence.

It’s been approximately three and a quarter years since I first wrote about BOAT, what was once a Seattle by the way of Chicago band. They’ve now fully integrated themselves into the northwest, and have given us three stellar albums (the most current of which was released last month; a fact I just recently, to my surprise, discovered). I’m waiting for that call; the one from the record store notifying me my order is in; the order of BOAT’s latest LP, Setting The Paces.
So, while I await …

Directly upon the heels of two stellar releases, Every Scene Needs A Center by Tullycraft and Daughters And Suns by The Owls, Magic Marker Records treats us to a bit of a surprise. Where the label’s typical release is inundated with pop and twee, Fred Thomas’ Flood can almost be considered experimental folk, or even freak folk. Learning Thomas’ history in pop will help the listener understand this release and its home on Magic Marker.

When I think of indie-pop in the states, I think of a few key labels: Matinee, Magic Marker, Happy Happy Birthday to Me and TwentySeven. These four make up some of the best US released pop music I know. It’s on the second, Magic Marker, that The Faintest Ideas now call home. The Faintest Ideas hail from Sweden, a country I adore and admire, but their name and sound signifies something completely different, removing much of the Swedish pop influence for those a bit more British, circa C86.

When I discovered BOAT (MySpace), I pre-ordered Songs That You Might Not Like and started a FensePost feature article on the band within ten minutes of initial discovery. Still, when I received the album, it took a while for me to give it a full listen and it took a few weeks to really appreciate the music. A week and a half ago I drove to Spokane and finally gave it a good spin. Multiple listens, a few coffee stains, and two worn edges later, the result was miraculous.

Despite being released in 2004, “Air” off Our Hopes And Dreams by The Owls was one of the frequented songs in my playlist last summer. The song maintains its pedestal spot as “Best Song By The Owls,” despite the recent release of Daughters And Suns. But where Our Hopes And Dreams as a whole maintained brevity in terms of my attention, Daughters And Suns finds the Minneapolis band with many more repeat plays.

In sociology there is an ancient debate that continues to rage today: are our instincts influenced by nature or nurture? On one side, nature argues that it is our inherent instinct that rules—that which is passed on from generation to generation. The nurture argument, on the other hand, would argue that we are a product of our environment. Much like the determinism versus free will argument in philosophy, when posed the question, many would say there are elements of both that make up our personalities and explain …