Old song, whole new Hume: If you've followed the Day-Glo prog pop of Britton Powell & Co., then you'll recognize "Grip," the first song on Sockets Records' spring mix. In the two years since Hume last committed the song to tape, the band has massaged it from propulsive Afropop into something gentler, just as lush [...]

Sean Peoples posted a huge update to the Sockets Records blog last night. Here's what the label has coming up:

A new HUME EP this summer, with a tour to follow.
A Laughing Man EP.
An Aaron Thompson LP, with lotsa guests.
An EP from N'Digo Rose, who plays keys in the Cornel West Theory.
A Cornel West Theory mixtape.
A Sean [...]

There’s a fight brewing on the interwebs, pitting generations of indie rock against each other. On one side is Carrie Brownstein, former member of Sleater-Kinney and NPR blogger, who favors the aggressive, punk take on indie rock that’s been passed over by allegedly toothless, safe indie rock over the past decade. On the other side [...]

Last year D.C.'s Sockets Records–working in partnership with True Panther Sounds–released the debut record by Brooklyn's Fly Girlz. On Da' Brats From Da' Ville six teenage MCs rapped over tracks composed by Nathan Corbin, a member of weirdo-industrial-improv group Excepter. The record was a big success. It bridged the hipster-to-local divide. It got on morning [...]

Back in September we interviewed D.C.-based singer/songwriter Aaron Thompson about his sleepy laptop jam "Vals." Thompson explained that the lyrics referred to imaginary landscape–a pastoral nowhere that he dreamed up while tinkering around with some chilly keyboard sounds. “I follow the telephone wires in the street lights and the sleeping houses,” he sings.
Perhaps the [...]

Yesterday's storm made driving impossible, grocery shopping tedious, and pretty much stopped all Netflix deliveries cold. On the lighter side, those wintry gusts of loose snow made for pretty good atmosphere.
Hume guitarist/songwriter Britton Powell suggested taking advantage of these icy, yet picturesque, conditions to record some music outdoors. Despite the short notice a few bands [...]

Good morning! I consumed a lot of soup and chili and beer last night and am paying for it today!
So: that half-time show. Very boring; Townshend and Daltrey looked and sounded old; pretty lights; blah blah, yes we all agree. More importantly! With the Who, the Super Bowl now seems to have run out of [...]

Missed the Sockets Records showcase last week? Too bad. It was a pretty good time. Luckily, the label has preserved it—well, three-fourths of it—for posterity. Throughout the week, Sockets has been doling out mp3s of the soundboard tapes on its blog. Now three of the five sets—including performances by Hume, Imperial China, and Buildings–are up [...]

If you couldn't tell already, we're extremely pumped for tonight's Sockets Records showcase at the Black Cat. In this week's One Track Mind, Leor Galil talks to one of the groups playing tonight, Imperial China, about "Corrupting the Integrity of the Grid," his favorite song on the trio's upcoming album Phosphenes. He writes:
... the track [...]

In honor of tonight's Sockets Records showcase, All Our Noise recently hosted a live session for space-punk trio Buildings. The band performed two songs, "Tesselations" (see above) and "Tiny Mountains," which you can find at the AON site.