Video: Fever Ray - When I Grow Up

The second single off of Fever Ray's endlessly relistenable self titled album finds itself a new home in video form. "When I Grow Up" may not have all the mystery as it's older video sibling, but it's still pretty fucking weird. Some young freak folk conjures the water spirits with a creepy dance and, obviously, there's some gross perv who's hypnotized by her ways. But lets be honest here. If I saw that girl wearing those, uh, "clothes" and grooving on the diving board to my backyard pool, I'd find it pretty hard not to stare.

Video: Fever Ray - If I Had A Heart

Normally I don't like taking things right from Pitchfork. Nor do I like writing about the same band repeatedly. But the video for Fever Ray's (aka Karin Dreijer Andersson, aka the woman half of The Knife) "If I Had A Heart" is amazing. It's dark and fucking creepy as hell. Are all those people dead? Did the freaky forest people with masks do it? Or was it the skull faced woman? I don't know! But it looks like those kids made it through OK. Thank GOD.

Staples: The Double - Loose In The Air

The Double - Up All Night


Staples is a feature about, you guessed it, staples in my music diet. Albums that no matter how (im)perfect they are, or how old or new they are, I always come back to them because they're that awesome.

I saw The Double open for Pretty Girls Make Graves a few years back and was totally blown away. It's not very often that an "opening" band can do something like that but The Double is pretty special. I picked up Loose In The Air that night and it's never left my side since.

The Double is a dark band. Dark and scary. Their songs have a very abrasive, rusty-metal-scraping-concrete quality to them. But they're bizarrely poppy, too. There are songs on Loose In The Air that are pretty light-hearted, catchy, and even dancey but there's always this menacing feedback lurking behind each one that throws you for a loop. And then there's the organ/synth thing that gives all of it a wicked '60s vibe. It's the weirdest fucking thing but so completely amazing.

Each song is entirely different from each other. From the wall of sound on the opening "Up All Night" and the creepy lullaby of "On Our Way" to the atonal "What Sound It Makes The Thunder" and straightforward booty shaking on "Dance." It all fits together thematically while at the same time being so diverse. A truly unique band with an unparalleled vision. It's just a shame they haven't done anything in 3+ years. They recorded a few new songs in August but no updates since then. Come on dudes, you're leaving me hanging.