Stream Foals’ new album, What Went Down

Foals returned today with their latest album, What Went Down, through Warner a Music. Spotify users can stream it completely here. 

The UK indie rock band’s fourth full-length album has 10 tracks and is the followup to Holy Fire from 2013. It was produced by James Ford, who is known for his work with Arctic Monkeys, HAIM, and Florence and the Machine and recorded in France. What Went Down was released after the singles, “Mountain at My Gates,” “A Knife in the Ocean,” and the title track. 

What Went Down Tracklist:

01. What Went Down

02. Mountain at My Gates

03. Birch Tree

04. Give It All

05. Albatross

06. Snake Oil

07. Night Swimmers

08. London Thunder

09. Lonely Hunter

10. A Knife in the Ocean

Destroyer releases video for “Times Square” of woodland creatures getting high

Dan Bejar has premiered a new video for “Times Square,” the newest single from his upcoming Destroyer album, Poison Season. The visual, which isdirected by Shayne Ehman, features woodland creatures getting high along with clips of Bejar singing at the camera. The creatures were made with stop-motion animation. 

Watch here, and read a statement from Ehman on the video below:

“We ended up just wandering around New York til 3am and the city seemed completely dead. We could have been anywhere, really. I needed to get outside and shoot in natural light in order to serve as a sort of conduit for those ‘forces of nature in love…’ which seem to rule the song. I let the sun do its thing and let the earth do it’s thing and watched time unfold. I watched the clouds unfold and unpack and packup. I was at their mercy, completely.”

Poison Season, which is the follow-up to Kaput, comes out tomorrow, August 28th through Merge Records. It is available to stream in full here.

Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste deletes Twitter account after backlash for Taylor Swift comments

Grizzly Bear frontman Ed Droste has been fighting with Taylor Swift for a while now. The situation started in earnest last month when he tweeted a photo of an article that compared Swift to Regina George from Mean Girls with the caption “Obsessed that people are catching on.” Droste also called her “self serving” and “calculating,” also explaining that he has “first hand experience” of being treated poorly by her and saying “she’s been given a free pass for too long.” Swifties leapt in the pop star’s defense immediately, and even though Droste admitted “She frightens me genuinely,” he did not back away. 
Swift is currently on an adventure to share her stage with every famous person in America, touring the country for her album, 1989, and welcoming a different star at each show, and Droste has been showing up periodically to express his disinterest with that. At her Los Angeles show last night, Swift brought out Beck and St. Vincent to perform Beck’s single “Dreams.” Somewhere else in Los Angeles, Droste spent his evening guesting on Haunting Renditions With Eliot Glazer, where they did a cover of Brandy & Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine” but he took time of to tweet:

  
Tons of Swift fans attacked Droste again, and it began to escalate. 

   
    
    
 
After all the controversy, HAIM, who are known to be best friends with Swift but also close to Droste, reportedly unfollowed him on Twitter with Alana Haim tweeting this: 

 
That seems to have been the last straw for Droste. After being fed up with all of the backlash, he made a few more shots and shout-outs and then deleted his Twitter account. 

   
    
 
Droste still has a social media prescence is not completely gone, he is on Instagram where he documents his travels for Vogue where you can follow him here. He is still on Snapchat. 

Tobias Jesso Jr. delivers a two song performance on Kimmel

It has been some time since Tobias Jesso Jr. appeared on TV but he returned to late-night on Monday performing two songs. He played a pair of songs from Goon, “Crocodile Tears” and “Hollywood” on Jimmy Kimmel Live! In his traditional heartfelt way. Jesso was backed by the Los Angeles band Duk, who also joined him during the FYF Fest set over the weekend.

Watch a replay of “Crocodile Tears” here and “Hollywood” here.

The National have begun work on a seventh studio album

With the announcement of Matt Berninger’s new collaboration, EL VY, as well as the multiple producing projects from the Dessner brothers have constantly been working on, it might feel like a new National album is in the far distance. However, this is not true according to Berninger.
In a recent interview with NME, the National frontman has revealed that the band has already begun writing their seventh studio album. Berninger said on the progress so far: “We did a camp out retreat in New York a couple of months ago, and we’re having another one in LA in a few weeks. We have 30 sketches of songs so far.”
He also added that the band is using names of different towns in upstate New York as working titles for the songs. 

The National’s previous album was Trouble Will Find Me in 2013. 

The Melodic Tree’s Weekly Playlist

1. First – Cold War Kids

2. Ceilings – Local Natives

3. I’m A Pilot – Fanfarlo

4.Multi-Love – Unknown Mortal Orchestra

5. Midnight Surprise – Lightspeed Champion

6. The Summer – Coconut Records

7. You! Me! Dancing! – Los Campesinos!

8. Black Wax – Dananananaykroyd

9. Sister of Pearl – Baio

10. Wizard Staff – Wampire

11. Radley – French Cassettes

12. The Less I Know The Better – Tame Impala

13. Wait & See – Holy Ghost!

14. Real Slow – Miami Horror

15. Shades of Black – Breakbot

16. 58th St – Gap Dream

17. Mr Understanding – Pete And the Pirates

18. Let’s Go Surfing – The Drums

19. Goran Ivanisenic – We Are the Physics

20. Pulling Push Ups – Copy Haho

Foo Fighters rickroll the Westboro Baptist Church

The United State’s main source of hatred, the Westboro Baptist Church, decided to protest last night’s Foo Fighters show in Kansas City, Missouri, for unknown reasons, even though there is never much of a reason for them to ever protest anything. The protesters assembled in front of the Sprint Center before the show when the band went riding in on a pickup truck blasting “Never Gonna Give You Up” and dancing while holding up signs saying “You got Rick Roll’d (again)” and “Keep It Clean.” This is the second time that Dave Grohl did a counter-protest against the WBC from a pickup truck. Watch here.

Stream The Weeknd’s 18 minute sampler of Beauty Behind the Madness

On the same day his Lana Del Rey collaboration came out, the Weeknd has released an 18-minute preview of his upcoming album, Beauty Behind The Madness, which is set to be released next Friday. After Foals released a album sampler earlier this week, this might be a new trend. Listen here.

Beauty Behind the Madness is due out on August 28th through XO/Republic. 

Kamasi Washington announces The Epic vinyl release

Jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington has announced the vinyl release of The Epic, his 2015 LP. The triple LP will be out on October 2nd through Brainfeeder. It will feature poster inserts, custom artwork; and a story adaptation by Kenturah Davis. Check out what it will look like here. Listen to “Re Run Home” here. 

Bill Hader and Fred Armisen to “reunite” as Blue Jean Committee and release an EP

Fred Armisen and Bill Hader have been long been walking the line with comedy and music, with Armisen even releasing a few parody tracks they had wrote on SNL over the years. There’s plenty of more to come now. 


Documentary Now! is the new IFC series from Armisen, Hader, and Seth Meyers that parodies documentary styles and the upcoming final part of the season will have a Behind The Music-esque style. It will follow the Blue Jean Committee a band that originally came from SNL and is named Gentle & Soft: The Story Of The Blue Jean Committee. In a tie-in, Drag City will be releasing the band’s “best” material on a Catalina Breeze EP.

Pre-order the Catalina Breeze EP here. It will be out on November 11th.