White Hills – Dead from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

Everyone remember Sally Shapiro, the icy Swedish disco duo? They had a couple albums that were blogged to death, including one that was released this year. Well, if you read the small print on their records, you’ll see the name Roger Gunnarson as the composer of many songs, including “Anorak...

Iconic R&B group Sade has a new album, Soldier of Love, prepped for release next year. The band, which features vocalist Sade Adu, is best known for such hit albums as 1985’s Diamond Life, 1992’s Love Deluxe and 2000’s Lover’s Rock. According to Sony labelmate Maxwell, the album is...

It was like the world had broken open and nothing was hidden anymore, like we were crawling all over it like salamanders. I felt my own life, a minnow in a brook, silvered and fleet. I was alive for no reason at all, finally unindentured… Download: ZAZEN, Chapter 19 — “The Sea Goat” (pdf, 57k) The...

NOVEMBER 25 — BA JIN Chinese anarchist, lifelong revolutionist, novelist. “I am a person always full of contradictions… It was hard to choose whether to devote myself to revolution as a soldier or as a writer.” NOVEMBER 25 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS Islamic HAJJ begins. USE EVEN IF SEAL IS BROKEN DAY...

Susan Boyle’s debut album, I Dreamed A Dream, may oust the Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not as the fastest-selling U.K. debut in history. Boyle sold 130,000 copies of her album during its first day of release, while Arctic Monkeys moved over 360,000 during their album’s...

I totally slept on Alphabeat’s newest single when it came out last month. You might have too. Well, we should both wake up because “The Spell” is a total jam. It trades out the Eighties worship of the first album (and the amazingly good singles “Fascination” and “10,000 Nights”) for a much slicker...

Grace keeps all of Cady’s things in a crib so that no one ever forgets to whom she really belonged. Stuffed rabbits, snap-on black leather bracelets with metal studs, half-used hair dye—Enchanted Forest and Electric Lava—black nail polish, a plastic record player, Mutant Ninja Turtle stickers...