• Hip Hop pioneer Guru suffered a heart attack yesterday and remains comatose and in critical condition. According to DJ Premier, Guru’s former partner in the legendary Gang Starr, the 43-year-old rapper, whose real name is Keith Elam, will undergo surgery today. Our thoughts are with him and his family

• “We Are The World,” it ain’t. As we revealed last month, The Pogues’ frontman Shane MacGowan is ready to release his cover of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell On You” in order to benefit Haiti emergency relief. The version of the song, featuring friends Nick Cave, Bobby Gillespie, Johnny Depp, Mick Jones, Glen Matlock, Chrissie Hynde, Cait O’Riordon, Paloma Faith and Eliza Doolittle will be available as a download-only single on March 8th, though you can pre-order it now from Independent Records Ltd., with proceeds going to Concern Worldwide’s Haiti Earthquake Appeal. And you can watch the video right now:

• The experimental and doom metal cranked out by Southern Lord is often so limited in its vinyl scope that it is often snatched up before the world gets to covet the prize. Fear this scenario no more metalheads, as the venerable label is stepping into the subscription biz with The First Level of Hell. The steep subscription guarantees seven official Southern Lord releases are sent to participants, with the seventh release promising to be a major surprise. The subscription is limited to 550 slots but considering it features the likes of Pelican, Ascend, and Black Cobra, the price and limited amount makes it worthy if you’re a fan.

• Everyone’s high on Neon Indian at the moment (including KEXP listener, Jimmy Fallon), including the cool executives at Mountain Dew! The green-tinted soft drink’s in-house digital label, Green Label Sound will be offering up an exclusive track from Neon Indian later this month.

• Have you not received your fill of Radiohead’s enigmatic singer, Thom Yorke: we aim to please. Yorke recently announced his new band featuring Flea, Joey Waronker, and producer Nigel Godrich will be christened Atoms For Peace. Now, video has popped up on the internets of three new Yorke solo tracks. Would you like to see them? Of course you would:

• 80s underground legend Eddy Detroit, who was a part of the Phoenix scene that birthed Meat Puppets and now-Seattle legends Sun City Girls, is getting the vinyl reissue treatment. Assophone Records is releasing the 1982 cult (and extremely limited) classic that features the talents of Charles Goucher, Alan Bishop, J. Akkari, and too many names to rattle off.

• Not only a big day for a select swatch of the population, April 20th will also prove to be a big day for fans of early Dan Bejar when Merge reissues three fully remastered gems from the early Destroyer. City of Daugheres, Thief, and Streethawk get the plastic disc treatment, with a vinyl reissue of Streethawk also in the works.

• Local legend Scott Kannberg, who just happens to be a member of Pavement, is delivering some inside knowledge on the band’s reunion through his blog. The band’s lengthy tour — with many dates and cities sure to be announced (please don’t make Sasquatch your only stop in Washington, guys!) — begins today!

• Now that Olympic coverage has ceased, the late night talk shows are starting to pick up steam, but it’s slow going at first. On Thursday, though, you’ll need to max out your DVR ’cause Spoon, Fanfarlo, Galactic, and Silversun Pickups are all on the same night! Here are the week’s highlights:

  Monday, March 1

  watch a movie

  Tuesday, March 2

  Carson Daly: Phoenix
  Tavis Smiley: Angelique Kidjo

  Wednesday, March 3

  Jimmy Fallon: Erykah Badu

  Thursday, March 4

  David Letterman: Spoon
  Jimmy Kimmel: Galactic
  Jimmy Fallon: Silversun Pickups
  Carson Daly: Fanfarlo

  Friday, March 5

  David Letterman: Corinne Bailey Rae
  Craig Ferguson: Regina Spektor

The Knack, left to right:
Bruce Gary, Doug Fieger, Berton Averre and Prescott Niles

• Sadly, Doug Fieger, frontman of New Wave trailblazers The Knack died yesterday after battling several years with cancer at age 57. Perhaps most famously, Fielder co-wrote and sang the 1979 hit “My Sharona” (revived in 1994 thanks to its inclusion on the Reality Bites soundtrack), but over the last few decades The Knack continued to release albums and perform periodically. A memorial service in LA is currently being planned. Read more here.

• You may have heard the buzz on the blogs and Twitter lately about Jimmy Fallon touting Neon Indian upon first hearing them and using smartphone app Shazam to identify them. But did you know where he first heard the song? That’s right… KEXP! Thanks for the shout out, Jimmy!

• Last week, several music blog operators using Google’s Blogger and Blogspot accounts lost all access to their accounts, in some cases losing years’ worth of archives. Among them are popular blogs Pop Tarts, Masala, I Rock Cleveland, To Die By Your Side, It’s a Rap, and Living Ears — all of whom received messages upon deletion stating that their blogs had “repeatedly violated Blogger’s Terms of Service.” To the Guardian UK, Bill Lipold, the owner of I Rock Cleveland, gave a number of examples of label-approved postings that still somehow drew complaints as violations the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Calling it #musicblogocide2k10, readers and blog operators were outraged by the sudden closures, and as a result of the outcry at least Masala, which focuses mostly on World and remix culture, is back up and running on Blogspot. Apparently, Google’s Project Manager, Rick Klau, stated that in this case “the problem was that due to a processing error” that did not allow the blog operator to address complaints. Following its closure, I Rock Cleveland has moved to a new home. More largely read blogs My Old Kentucky Home and Gorilla vs. Bear remained unaffected.

• The rock band that would make Sinatra proud, The Walkmen, have announced they have signed with venerable blues label-gone-reckless, Fat Possum. The band is already in the studio at work on the follow-up to You and Me with hopes of having the album out later this year.

• Akron/Family have tapped into their love of dusty troubadour, Woody Guthrie, with the start of the Woody Project, which encourages fans to create their own version of the song, “Woody Guthrie’s America,” to share with the band and the world.

• Sticking to the college hamlet of Bloomington, Indiana, Jagjaguwar have announced the signing of Small Black and the impending April 27th release of the duo’s remastered and expanded eponymous EP.

• Perhaps the next, great pure rock and roll sound will be the work of Jerusalem and the Starbaskets. The Columbia, Missouri, based duo will be releasing a 7-inch later this month via De Stijl as well as a full-length LP through The Great Pop Supplement.

• In celebration of Valentine’s Day… and to forward promote his upcoming release, Joseph Arthur has made a new song, “Love Never Asks You To Lie,” available via YouTube:

• Seattle native Jen Wood will be releasing her first album in nearly eight years, Finds You in Love, on March 2nd. The album will only available through Jen and her new label, New Granada.

• Not content just releasing digital albums on holidays, former Grandaddy headmaster Jason Lytle is forming Admiral Radley (named with the inspiration of a Craigslist listing) with former bandmate, Aaron Burtch, and members of Earlimart.

• Apparently, the Olympics trump new music releases… who knew? The talk show circuit is slow this week with Letterman, Leno, Fallon and the other survivors welcoming athletes rather than musicians. But that’s no excuse for you to miss Fanfarlo on Letterman tonight! Not many other highlights, so why not check out the ageless Sade and British hopefuls Mumford & Sons?

  Monday, February 15

  David Letterman: Fanfarlo

  Tuesday, February 16

  Jimmy Kimmel: Sade

  Wednesday, February 17

  David Letterman: Mumford & Sons

Fanfarlo is the brainchild of Swedish-born singer-songwriter Simon Balthazar, as well as the moniker of the London-based pop quintet he formed in 2006. Over the past three years, the band has been awfully busy: they’ve released a number of singles for various independent labels, made several tour stops at SXSW and in the back of London taxi cabs, and steadily accumulated some adoring Internet buzz along the way. For the recording of Reservoir, their recently self-released full-length debut, the group holed up in the Bridgeport, Connecticut, studio of producer Peter Katis (Interpol, The National) during the fall of 2008.

Reservoir features eleven lush arrangements of rousing orchestral indie-pop. Comparisons of the album’s sound to the likes of the Arcade Fire, Beirut, and Neutral Milk Hotel abound, and these comparisons are valid, but only insofar as Fanfarlo’s ambitious music similarly draws inspiration from an expansive and often unconventional palette. Elements of traditional English folk, post-rock, and marching-band fanfare (just to name a few) are found within the band’s already vast instrumental collage of mandolin, glockenspiel, chimes, trombone, and the more commonplace presence of guitars, keys, and drums. The songs’ baroque and sweeping melodies provide the backdrop to Balthazar’s plaintive voice, which sings urging and dreamy tales of men and women caught up in life’s spin. Reservoir is a powerfully affecting record, and a confident debut from a band with a future that’s soon to be at the center of attention. That they aspire for the same lofty indie-pop pedestal of other cherished and idiosyncratic acts should not serve as a knock against them at all; rather, the references to those bands are merely points of departure for Fanfarlo’s own inspired and wondrous ride.

Fanfarlo not only released their debut themselves, but they also handcrafted 500 limited editions of the album — housed in special foil-blocked, embossed linen-covered dvd-shaped box, packed with an exclusive set of heavyweight letterpress printed postcards featuring the band’s artwork and lyrics — themselves! They set up a production line in their own living room and handpacked each one:

The sets were originally available through Rough Trade but are long gone by now. However, we have two of them to give away! You have until 2PM Monday, July 6, to send an email saying what you love about Fanfarlo’s new album, and two lucky winners will be chosen. (Sorry, self-pity doesn’t work.)

If you hurry to their website, you can download the entire album, plus four bonus tracks, for only one dollar, but the offer expires tomorrow, July 4th!

Here are some more beautiful photos of the set by Ben Ward:

– submitted by James Truitt

• If you hadn’t heard already, Bob Bogle, lead guitarist of The Ventures and master of the whammy bar, died this past weekend in Tacoma. He was 75. Bogle started The Ventures in Tacoma in 1958 with fellow masonry worker Don Wilson. The group was well known for their theme to the show Hawaii Five-O and “Walk, Don’t Run” and popularized if not originated the surf rock sound. Even when their popularity dwindled in the U.S., The Ventures continued performing and became, and remained, the most popular American rock group in Japan. They finally got their due at home last year when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bogle, unfortunately, was unable to attend as a result of his decades-long struggle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma to which he finally succumbed last Sunday. His work as a music innovator will never be forgotten. Read more.

• Although I’m way too young to know anything about them (today is my twenty first birthday!), Os Mutantes are apparently legends of tropicalia. The group, who reunited to perform shows a few years back, has signed with Anti- and is getting ready to release their first album of new material 35 years. Now I’ll get to know how great they are.

• Jack White is non-stop, and if you still can’t get enough of him, The White Stripes are turning their 2007 Canadian Tour into a documentary. The tour had some strange stops, like a transit bus, fishing boat, and classroom, so a documentary only seems natural.

• Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, has dropped his beef with Coldplay over alleged plagiarism over the British group’s hit “Viva La Vida.” Islam still believes the group took the main melody from his song “Foreigner Suite” but forgave the group and even invited them for tea. I hope he has scones and treats for Chris Martin and Co. to crush the catfight.

Chad Syme

• The Raveonettes are Twittering like mad in promotion of their fourth album, which hasn’t even been recorded yet! The band has been releasing studio demos of songs and encouraging fans to live chat with them about the new songs. (The next chat is today at 12PM PST.) Join in the fun at Vice Records.

• Seems like The Features‘ excellent album Some Kind of Salvation has been release several times already, but it’s apparently hitting the shelves once again as the first release of a new label (as yet unnammed) imprint co-run by Kings of Leon. According to the press release, the boys of KOL have joined up with publishing company Bug Music to sign and develop “dynamic artists that are committed as a band and writing extraordinary music.” Further details are pending.

• Devo has recruited LCD Soundsystem’s main man James Murphy for a collaboration on their new album. Yes, it’s for real. Yes, it’s that awesome.

• Bands announcing their late summer tours. Among them, Ra Ra Riot, who will be at Marymoor Park with Death Cab for Cutie in July; The Dodos whose forthcoming album, Time To Die, is due 9/15 on FrenchKiss and who will perform in Seattle on August 14 as part of KEXP’s Summer Concerts series at the Mural Ampitheater (free!); and Modest Mouse, who will be at Bumbershoot this year on September 7.

• A frugal savings message from Sigur Ros:

  “Our great friends in London Fanfarlo are making their amazing debut album, ‘Reservoir’, available for $1 (USD) until Independence Day (July 4), along with 4 exclusive bonus tracks. It’s got Sigurrós and her cousin Disa on the front cover in a pic by Jónsi’s other sis Lilja (true), and we urge you all to go and get it straight away.”

  If you’re unfamiliar with Fanfarlo, keep listening to KEXP as you’re bound to hear one of our many DJ’s playing it (and they were featured recently as one of our Song of the Day podcasts), but for a buck, how can you really go wrong? Download it now here.

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s featured selection, chosen by Afternoon Show host Kevin Cole, is “The Walls are Coming Down,” by Fanfarlo from their 2009 self-released album, Reservoir.

“The Walls are Coming Down” pickpockets a bit of everything enjoyable from pop’s lengthy history. The melody twinkles, the lyrics are quaint, and the tune is short and sweet. Fanfarlo packs their tunes with horns, glockenspiels, chimes, and other instruments from fairy’s fluttering wings to counterbalance the traditional guitar, bass, and drums. The kicker is how fast “The Walls are Coming Down” flies by, tapping into pop’s oft forgotten secret — although it would smack us in the face should we ignore it: the quicker the song, the more we’re likely to love it and wear it thin. We’ve all had those moments when our finger has been glued to a Rewind/Reverse button to listen to a new pop fantasy over and over. It began in childhood and it’ll continue until age or apathy forcefully removes that finger. Until that time, we shall keep it pressed upon mousepad, at the ready to listen to flamboyantly contained wonderment of “The Walls are Coming Down.”

Fanfarlo will be spending the summer touring season in their native United Kingdom — details are available via the band’s MySpace page. We always have a way to help you get over your sadness quickly (beyond the advice of buying a costly plane ticket and vacationing in England, though it’d be grand), and today is no different. Please to enjoy the music video for “Harold T. Jenkins”: