Benoit & Sergio don’t make dance tracks—they tell stories. In the Washington, DC duo’s music, a sense of place and narrative infuse their rhythms and melodies, transcending the confines of “tech-house” or “electronic pop” and entering a genre-free realm of cinematic imagery and visceral pleasures. Benoit & Sergio draw from influences mostly uncommon to the house-and-techno zeitgeist—bands like Talking Heads, Pavement, Roxy Music, Paul Simon—while keeping an ear towards electronic-music contemporaries like Isolee, Thomas Melchior, and Ricardo Villalobos. The resulting tracks pulse with hooks and atmosphere, proudly flying their creators’ freak flag while giving listeners a little something extra to dance about. [via]

I am loving these guys, there is just something about the music that makes me want to dance around in my chair at work :P Music is so upbeat and happy, and I love the touch of soul! Check them out on last.fm or facebook.

BON IVER “Holocene” from nabil elderkin on Vimeo.

[If you have not heard, Battles just released Gloss Drop and it is amazing! Check out a review of it here!]

As a co-founding member of Shinkoyo records, Matt Mehlan’s Skeletons project retains the label’s core ideals – collaboration, experimentation, and unpredictability. Beginning in Oberlin, Ohio as a solo project with help from an eclectic cast of collaborators (classically-trained trombonists, punk rock drummers, a junkyard boy’s choir), Skeletons has now settled comfortably into its adult body, having established the full-time band The Girl-Faced Boys, who mesh impeccable hooks with dissonant world-beat funk, gorgeous-butcreepy balladeer intonations, and grotesque moments of noise that forge cohesion from discord.

Their unique out-pop stylings have earned loose comparisons to artists such as Animal Collective, The Postal Service, Sea and Cake, and Xiu Xiu, and their distinctive outsider sensibilities have won over crowds while supporting acts like TV On The Radio, The Unicorns, VHS or Beta, and Holger Czukay (of Can). The world of Skeletons and the Girl-Faced Boys has thus far been an esoteric
one, but the brilliance of their debut Ghostly LP Git offers a solid and irresistible step forward into a new realm for the label and for avant-pop altogether. via

I really love Skeletons on their own too. Skeltons is like Animal Collective meets Radiohead meets Dave Mathews.

For mercurial L.A. music-maker Will Wiesenfeld, Baths has been a long time coming. The 21-year-old has spent the better part of his days living amidst “pleasant” and “unremarkable” in the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley, so perhaps it’s due to a general lack of local inspiration that Wiesenfeld’s own work has never fit into a prefab box of its own. Over the last six years, under the handle of [Post-Foetus], Wiesenfeld has gainfully explored the intersections and outer reaches of both electronic and acoustic music. With Baths, his eclecticism finds its greatest focus yet, in a hail of lush melodies, ghostly choirs, playful instrumentation and stuttering beats.

Wiesenfeld’s trip began at age 4, when he willed his parents into enrolling him in piano lessons. (The family upright, purchased that same year, sits in his bedroom today.) By 13, he’d begun recording his own music using Digital Performer and a MIDI keyboard – a brief, ill-advised foray into Eurobeat that was set right when Wiesenfeld heard Björk for the first time. Mind blown, he quickly boned up on viola, contrabass, and guitar and took the name [Post-Foetus], stringing together countless live configurations to execute his increasingly inimitable compositions. [Post-Foetus]’ fourth album – a Dntel-ish, song-based mélange dubbed The Fabric – was released on Mü-Nest in January.

Though Baths represents the next evolution in Wiesenfeld’s oeuvre – which also includes the excellent ambient project Geotic – it came together under nigh-opposite circumstances. Last September, [Post-Foetus] was invited by L.A. electronicist Daedelus to share a bill with a handful of local Beat Music luminaries. Witnessing a burgeoning movement firsthand sparked something in Wiesenfeld that the ’burbs never could. In a fit of inspiration, Baths was born, though not into a preexisting scene. As is to be expected, this music goes its own way: fueled by spontaneity, tempered by Wiesenfeld’s background in classic songwriting. Those two influences collide in glorious ways on Cerulean, Baths’ stunning debut. [via]

Lusine – “Two Dots” from Ghostly International on Vimeo.

Britta Johnson (video director for Andrew Bird, among others) brings Lusines gorgeous new single Two Dots to life, illustrating the songs relationships-as-trigonometry analogy in an intricately animated video. In the clip, a pair of marbles—one blue, one yellow—engage in the timeless dance of seduction on a horizontal plain, mapping the ups and downs of a courtship through pencil-drawn geometric principles. Like Two Dots, Johnsons video lives in the middle ground between technology and humanity, emotional immediacy and obsessive detail.