Fool's Gold honcho and Fader editor leave you No Alternative but to download their new '90s mix

How fitting that on the day after another bit of blatant '90s pandering hit the airwaves, Fool's Gold honcho Nick Catchdubs and Fader magazine editor Eric Ducker put together this nifty megamix of hits from that magical time when some label head thought MC 900 Foot Jesus would be a lasting investment. It veers from the unavoidable (Soundgarden, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana) to the still-hipster-beloved (Pavement, Björk, Dinosaur Jr.) to expert used-bin trolling (Soul Coughing, Harvey Danger) and a childrens' treasury of era-appropriate novelty hits -- King Missle's "Detachable Penis," for starters!

It's all interspersed with a good bit of "Sweater Song"-inspired background chatter and movie quotes, so if you ever want to make your Gen X friends quietly weep for their lost youth in a corner at an upcoming house party, press play and wait for Courtney Love to show up and down the punch bowl.

-- August Brown

Photo of Primus courtesy of Atlantic Records

Shooting a documentary about high school teenagers must be like trying to capture a smoke ring in a jar, but director Nanette Burstein has spun a thousand hours of footage into gold with "American Teen," a documentary that follows four Indiana teenagers through their senior year of high school. Embarrassingly personal at times, goofy and hopeful at others, the film, which opens today, has been aptly described as a documentary version of "The Breakfast Club."

Bookended with anthemic paeans to the glories of youth, the soundtrack to "American Teen," which opens with Black Kids' "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You" and closes with MGMT's "Kids," offers a cross-section of nearly every indie rock trend du jour. The soundtrack's neither deep nor particularly broad, but it makes a perfect backdrop for the film. You can listen to streams from the soundtrack at the end of this post.

Before setting out to make their mark on the post-punk landscape, Leonard Jackson and Ian Schaeffer --  pals from their day jobs at Guitar Center -- left their marks on plenty of bottles of beer. “We were drinking buddies first, and we’d sit around and philosophize about how things should be,” Jackson says. “Once we’d created our utopian band model, we realized there was no other solution but to do it.”

Now, singer-guitarist Jackson and bassist Schaeffer, along with guitarist Greg Smith and drummer Tom DuPree III, have moved forward as the Forward. Their debut album, “Nothing But Teeth” (due Sept. 9), showcases the quartet’s quick-hitting guitars, agitated rhythms and the wry, literate songs Jackson conceived during long hours of hawking merchandise that helped other artists realize their dreams.

Speidi's less Iago-ish half has a new club-pop joint that blows the unfortunate "Higher" away easily. Yet the wantonly Euro-dancey "One More Drink" still sounds like what I imagine a breakfast smoothie of Adderall, Froot Loops, Plan B and the hot tears of regret tastes like. Happy Fourth of July, kids.

-- August Brown

Photo of Heidi Montag by Jeff Gentner/ Getty Images

The bad news out of western China just gets worse after Monday's earthquake in the Sichuan province. So, with a bit of a heavy heart, we offer this new track from the bluegrass singer-songwriter Abigail Washburn, who frequently writes and performs in Mandarin. "Great Big Wall in China" is off her forthcoming self-titled album with the Sparrow Quartet (when Bela Fleck is your sideman, you know you're doing something right), and it's a lovely, restless and occasionally sinister elaboration on the genre of banjo-driven Sino-folk she all but invented on her album "Song of the Traveling Daughter." Her set at last year's Stagecoach Festival was an absolute joy to watch, but recent events just make this sad song hit even harder.

Abigail Washburn: Great Big Wall in China

-August Brown

Photo by Bob Delevante

Obsessive "Donnie Darko"-philes (or, we suppose, fans of "Southland Tales" too) who keep up with writer/director Richard Kelly's blog saw this little update on production of his new Cameron Diaz-James Marsden nail-biter "The Box":

"The last few months have been an amazing time for us on the editing of
'The Box.' We're starting to work with a very famous band who is honoring us with
being the first filmmakers they've ever scored a film with. Hopefully there will be an announcement soon about who it is!"

If you're inclined to trust the website of noted producer whiz Markus Dravs (which we are), that band is none other than Canada's favorite apocalypse-minded hurdy-gurdy purveyors, Arcade Fire. It would be the first film collaboration for the band, and odds are fairly high that Win Butler's less-than-optimistic worldview (and Eli Sunday-inspired wardrobe) will be a prefect fit for Kelly's affection for prophetic outsiders.

-- August Brown

Photo by Jim Dyson / Getty Images

Rarely has a debut album sounded so fresh and endearing — without your suspecting the writer copped somebody’s songbook — as the Morning Benders’ “Talking Through Tin Cans.”

The Berkeley-based quartet metes out three-minute dollops of youthful pining as if love songs were something they just sprang on the Internet. “We’re just looking to do something that sounds authentic,” says frontman Chris Chu, an unabashed fan of classic pop who, at 21, appears years away from his first encounter with a razor. “Most of the music I look back on [fondly] has an honest emotion.”

The Benders’ formula of scratchy-but-tasteful guitars, agile melodies and wizened-not-whiny sentiment evolved as if by fate. Chu, a Santa Monica native (in fact, three of the four Benders have SoCal roots), “picked up a friend’s guitar when I was home sick from school one day and started playing,” he says.

Off he went to Cal, where he eventually found Joe Ferrell (guitars, keyboards), Julian Harmon (drums) and, now, Tim Or (who has replaced original bassist David Perales). “After I moved up to Berkeley, I just started writing songs — yeah, I had some girl troubles, but I had some good things happen too,” Chu says. “All the songs are kind of a snapshot of what was going on at the time.”

And to gauge from Chu’s enthusiasm, the album, released this week by fledgling label +1 Records, is just the start. “We love playing music, and so far everything about it is exactly how I wanted it to be,” he says. “We want to make another album already.”

||| Live: The Morning Benders play their album-release show Thursday night at the Echo (free to those who buy the album at Virgin Megastore or at the label's website). (They will also be back in L.A. on May 19, opening for the Kooks at the Wiltern.)

||| Download: "Boarded Doors."

||| Watch: The Morning Benders' new video for "Boarded Doors" is the brainchild of Daniel Stessen, creative director of the L.A. art-film-music collective People Food. Given Chu's boyish looks, it's, um, a perfect fit.

Upcoming in L.A.
Speaking of Stessen, he and his People Food cohorts (including the Gray Kid) will perform Saturday night at downtown's Redwood Bar. ... Local psych-poppers the Parson Red Heads celebrate the release of their new EP, "Owl & Timber," with a show Friday at Spaceland. ... And Saturday at Spaceland, Sky Parade marks the release of its new EP,  "High on Desire," with a show supporting impressive U.K. newcomers Air Traffic. ... The Donnas' 15th anniversary show Friday at the Viper Room is sold out -- as is Saturday's show at the Troubadour featuring the Duke Spirit, whose new album, "Neptune," measures up as one of the most solid rock records so far this year. ... Electro-poppers Casxio just released a free four-song digital EP (go to their website for the goods) and have a show tonight at UC Riverside (and May 15 at the Continental Room in Fullerton). ... With its second EP, "Bloomsbury," just out, Princeton plays a support slot for Le Switch's residency on Monday at the Echo. ... And it's a big night in store Monday at Indie 103.1's weekly shindig at the Viper Room -- Everest (its debut "Ghost Notes" just out) and Film School are on the bill.

-- Kevin Bronson

Morning Benders photo by Timothy Norris

To listen to the mix in its entirety, click here!

LA Riots don’t do nuance. The Riots’ remixes for A-list electro acts such as Justice, Hot Chip, VHS or Beta and Kid Sister break the faders on every ingredient that matters to a packed dance floor: crunching bass, anthemic hooks and jittery edits that have come to define crossover dance music in the last year.The duo recently signed on with MSTRKRFT’s management and got a record deal with Fools Gold, the label co-owned by Kanye West’s longtime DJ, A-Trak, which has been running the table on flinty hip-hop and electronica. But the Riots made time to craft an L.A. Times-exclusive DJ mix of artists performing at Coachella that they feel define the electro scene this year. It’s 20 minutes of relentless party-starting cuts from France, England, Australia, Brazil and exotic Canada that you can expect to hear in this year’s dance tent, and features several of their own hotly tipped remixes of Coachella artists. Here's what the Riots had to say about what went into this mix:

"We chose artists that we feel directly relate to what's going on in electronic music today. It was pretty easy with the lineup at this year's Coachella because so many of the artists are staples in our sets. Every single song we used in this mix we've played in the clubs recently."

Polish your Wayfarers, don your gold-lamé swimsuit and remember that Paris doesn’t have a lockdown on sweat, sex and techno. We do just fine on our own here.

Hot Chip -- "Ready for the Floor (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Kavinsky -- "Testarossa Autodrive (sebastiAn Remix)" Buy it here.

Justice -- "DVNO (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Bonde Do Role -- "Gasolina (Radioclit remix)" Buy it here.

Uffie -- "Hot Chick" Buy it here.

M.I.A -- "Bamboo Banga" Buy it here.

Kid Sister -- "Control (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Cut Copy -- "Saturdays" Buy it here.

Chromeo -- "Needy Girl (Vandalism Remix)" Buy it here.

Boys Noize -- "oh! (A-Trak Remix)" Buy it here.

Justice -- "The Party (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Yelle -- "A Cause des Garcons" Buy it here.

Tegan and Sara -- "Back in Your Head (Morgan Page Remix)" Buy it here.

Photo: ronysphotobooth

Just think of the Ruby Suns’ sound — an arrestingly wide-ranging palette of psych-pop, island flavors, Asian exotica and traditional African music — as influenced mostly by frontman Ryan McPhun’s dual citizenship.

McPhun, 25, was reared in Ventura, the son of a Kiwi father and an American mother, a fan of bands such as the Beatles, Sloan, Jason Falkner, obsessive about the Beach Boys and Nirvana, “and a little bit too shy for a lot of the emo and hard-core stuff” that was popular with his friends, he says.

Off McPhun went to New Zealand, where after a short stint at university, he traveled the world and settled in Auckland. He fell in with pop artists on Kiwi indie label Lil’ Chief and played with the Brunettes and the Tokey Tones while finishing up his own album, a 2005 Beach Boys paean released under the rhyme-alicious name Ryan McPhun & the Ruby Suns.

“Some of the songs I had written before I moved, but I was changing very quickly,” he says. “I started getting into less straightforward stuff ... other music from all over the globe. I became less worried about style and more concerned with rhythms and earth sounds.”

That’s reflected on the Ruby Suns’ sophomore album, “Sea Lion” (a March release in the U.S. on Sub Pop), whose miasma of instrumentation, sweet melodies and sounds found in places like New Zealand’s South Island, southern Africa and Thailand make for meditations that border on hallucinations.

“It’s a very broad album,” McPhun says. "Geographically speaking.”

||| Live: The Ruby Suns perform with Le Loup and Princeton on Saturday at the Echo.

||| Download: "Tane Mahuta"

||| Download, from the Ruby Suns' debut album: "Look Out SOS!"

Photo courtesy of Sub Pop

-- Kevin Bronson

Her name is Katie White. Not Stacey, not Jane, not "her" or any of that other stuff she rap-sings in the wonderfully addictive single "That's Not My Name." White is blond, stylish, and when she's not rockin the mic, she straps on a guitar and fronts the Ting Tings, the critically acclaimed duo straight outta Salford, U.K.

Her dashing drummer, Jules De Martino, supplies backing vocals. Together, the Ting Tings have created a dynamic, fresh sound evoking '80s hooks at the right moments, all of which earned them a rightful place on year-end Top 10 critics' lists all over England in 2007.

Only problem is, unless you live in the U.K., you won't (for now) be able to buy any Ting Tings off iTunes, including "That's Not My Name." (But if you make it after the jump, there might be something special awaiting you.)

Speaking of names, in a recent interview with NME -- which recently praised the duo as being "by far the best pop band the UK has produced in years" -- White explained that the band name comes from an actual person. "I used to work for a girl called Ting Ting. We didn’t really decide to be a band but everybody said they liked us so we decided to pick a name and Ting Ting was it. Then we Googled it and found out that it meant ‘the sound of innovation on an open mind’, so we just thought screw it let’s call us that!"

The ‘American Teen’ soundtrack isn’t very deep but it fits the movie

Shooting a documentary about high school teenagers must be like trying to capture a smoke ring in a jar, but director Nanette Burstein has spun a thousand hours of footage into gold with "American Teen," a documentary that follows four Indiana teenagers through their senior year of high school. Embarrassingly personal at times, goofy and hopeful at others, the film, which opens today, has been aptly described as a documentary version of "The Breakfast Club."

Bookended with anthemic paeans to the glories of youth, the soundtrack to "American Teen," which opens with Black Kids' "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You" and closes with MGMT's "Kids," offers a cross-section of nearly every indie rock trend du jour. The soundtrack's neither deep nor particularly broad, but it makes a perfect backdrop for the film. You can listen to streams from the soundtrack at the end of this post.

Before setting out to make their mark on the post-punk landscape, Leonard Jackson and Ian Schaeffer --  pals from their day jobs at Guitar Center -- left their marks on plenty of bottles of beer. “We were drinking buddies first, and we’d sit around and philosophize about how things should be,” Jackson says. “Once we’d created our utopian band model, we realized there was no other solution but to do it.”

Now, singer-guitarist Jackson and bassist Schaeffer, along with guitarist Greg Smith and drummer Tom DuPree III, have moved forward as the Forward. Their debut album, “Nothing But Teeth” (due Sept. 9), showcases the quartet’s quick-hitting guitars, agitated rhythms and the wry, literate songs Jackson conceived during long hours of hawking merchandise that helped other artists realize their dreams.

Speidi's less Iago-ish half has a new club-pop joint that blows the unfortunate "Higher" away easily. Yet the wantonly Euro-dancey "One More Drink" still sounds like what I imagine a breakfast smoothie of Adderall, Froot Loops, Plan B and the hot tears of regret tastes like. Happy Fourth of July, kids.

-- August Brown

Photo of Heidi Montag by Jeff Gentner/ Getty Images

The bad news out of western China just gets worse after Monday's earthquake in the Sichuan province. So, with a bit of a heavy heart, we offer this new track from the bluegrass singer-songwriter Abigail Washburn, who frequently writes and performs in Mandarin. "Great Big Wall in China" is off her forthcoming self-titled album with the Sparrow Quartet (when Bela Fleck is your sideman, you know you're doing something right), and it's a lovely, restless and occasionally sinister elaboration on the genre of banjo-driven Sino-folk she all but invented on her album "Song of the Traveling Daughter." Her set at last year's Stagecoach Festival was an absolute joy to watch, but recent events just make this sad song hit even harder.

Abigail Washburn: Great Big Wall in China

-August Brown

Photo by Bob Delevante

Obsessive "Donnie Darko"-philes (or, we suppose, fans of "Southland Tales" too) who keep up with writer/director Richard Kelly's blog saw this little update on production of his new Cameron Diaz-James Marsden nail-biter "The Box":

"The last few months have been an amazing time for us on the editing of
'The Box.' We're starting to work with a very famous band who is honoring us with
being the first filmmakers they've ever scored a film with. Hopefully there will be an announcement soon about who it is!"

If you're inclined to trust the website of noted producer whiz Markus Dravs (which we are), that band is none other than Canada's favorite apocalypse-minded hurdy-gurdy purveyors, Arcade Fire. It would be the first film collaboration for the band, and odds are fairly high that Win Butler's less-than-optimistic worldview (and Eli Sunday-inspired wardrobe) will be a prefect fit for Kelly's affection for prophetic outsiders.

-- August Brown

Photo by Jim Dyson / Getty Images

Rarely has a debut album sounded so fresh and endearing — without your suspecting the writer copped somebody’s songbook — as the Morning Benders’ “Talking Through Tin Cans.”

The Berkeley-based quartet metes out three-minute dollops of youthful pining as if love songs were something they just sprang on the Internet. “We’re just looking to do something that sounds authentic,” says frontman Chris Chu, an unabashed fan of classic pop who, at 21, appears years away from his first encounter with a razor. “Most of the music I look back on [fondly] has an honest emotion.”

The Benders’ formula of scratchy-but-tasteful guitars, agile melodies and wizened-not-whiny sentiment evolved as if by fate. Chu, a Santa Monica native (in fact, three of the four Benders have SoCal roots), “picked up a friend’s guitar when I was home sick from school one day and started playing,” he says.

Off he went to Cal, where he eventually found Joe Ferrell (guitars, keyboards), Julian Harmon (drums) and, now, Tim Or (who has replaced original bassist David Perales). “After I moved up to Berkeley, I just started writing songs — yeah, I had some girl troubles, but I had some good things happen too,” Chu says. “All the songs are kind of a snapshot of what was going on at the time.”

And to gauge from Chu’s enthusiasm, the album, released this week by fledgling label +1 Records, is just the start. “We love playing music, and so far everything about it is exactly how I wanted it to be,” he says. “We want to make another album already.”

||| Live: The Morning Benders play their album-release show Thursday night at the Echo (free to those who buy the album at Virgin Megastore or at the label's website). (They will also be back in L.A. on May 19, opening for the Kooks at the Wiltern.)

||| Download: "Boarded Doors."

||| Watch: The Morning Benders' new video for "Boarded Doors" is the brainchild of Daniel Stessen, creative director of the L.A. art-film-music collective People Food. Given Chu's boyish looks, it's, um, a perfect fit.

Upcoming in L.A.
Speaking of Stessen, he and his People Food cohorts (including the Gray Kid) will perform Saturday night at downtown's Redwood Bar. ... Local psych-poppers the Parson Red Heads celebrate the release of their new EP, "Owl & Timber," with a show Friday at Spaceland. ... And Saturday at Spaceland, Sky Parade marks the release of its new EP,  "High on Desire," with a show supporting impressive U.K. newcomers Air Traffic. ... The Donnas' 15th anniversary show Friday at the Viper Room is sold out -- as is Saturday's show at the Troubadour featuring the Duke Spirit, whose new album, "Neptune," measures up as one of the most solid rock records so far this year. ... Electro-poppers Casxio just released a free four-song digital EP (go to their website for the goods) and have a show tonight at UC Riverside (and May 15 at the Continental Room in Fullerton). ... With its second EP, "Bloomsbury," just out, Princeton plays a support slot for Le Switch's residency on Monday at the Echo. ... And it's a big night in store Monday at Indie 103.1's weekly shindig at the Viper Room -- Everest (its debut "Ghost Notes" just out) and Film School are on the bill.

-- Kevin Bronson

Morning Benders photo by Timothy Norris

To listen to the mix in its entirety, click here!

LA Riots don’t do nuance. The Riots’ remixes for A-list electro acts such as Justice, Hot Chip, VHS or Beta and Kid Sister break the faders on every ingredient that matters to a packed dance floor: crunching bass, anthemic hooks and jittery edits that have come to define crossover dance music in the last year.The duo recently signed on with MSTRKRFT’s management and got a record deal with Fools Gold, the label co-owned by Kanye West’s longtime DJ, A-Trak, which has been running the table on flinty hip-hop and electronica. But the Riots made time to craft an L.A. Times-exclusive DJ mix of artists performing at Coachella that they feel define the electro scene this year. It’s 20 minutes of relentless party-starting cuts from France, England, Australia, Brazil and exotic Canada that you can expect to hear in this year’s dance tent, and features several of their own hotly tipped remixes of Coachella artists. Here's what the Riots had to say about what went into this mix:

"We chose artists that we feel directly relate to what's going on in electronic music today. It was pretty easy with the lineup at this year's Coachella because so many of the artists are staples in our sets. Every single song we used in this mix we've played in the clubs recently."

Polish your Wayfarers, don your gold-lamé swimsuit and remember that Paris doesn’t have a lockdown on sweat, sex and techno. We do just fine on our own here.

Hot Chip -- "Ready for the Floor (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Kavinsky -- "Testarossa Autodrive (sebastiAn Remix)" Buy it here.

Justice -- "DVNO (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Bonde Do Role -- "Gasolina (Radioclit remix)" Buy it here.

Uffie -- "Hot Chick" Buy it here.

M.I.A -- "Bamboo Banga" Buy it here.

Kid Sister -- "Control (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Cut Copy -- "Saturdays" Buy it here.

Chromeo -- "Needy Girl (Vandalism Remix)" Buy it here.

Boys Noize -- "oh! (A-Trak Remix)" Buy it here.

Justice -- "The Party (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Yelle -- "A Cause des Garcons" Buy it here.

Tegan and Sara -- "Back in Your Head (Morgan Page Remix)" Buy it here.

Photo: ronysphotobooth

Just think of the Ruby Suns’ sound — an arrestingly wide-ranging palette of psych-pop, island flavors, Asian exotica and traditional African music — as influenced mostly by frontman Ryan McPhun’s dual citizenship.

McPhun, 25, was reared in Ventura, the son of a Kiwi father and an American mother, a fan of bands such as the Beatles, Sloan, Jason Falkner, obsessive about the Beach Boys and Nirvana, “and a little bit too shy for a lot of the emo and hard-core stuff” that was popular with his friends, he says.

Off McPhun went to New Zealand, where after a short stint at university, he traveled the world and settled in Auckland. He fell in with pop artists on Kiwi indie label Lil’ Chief and played with the Brunettes and the Tokey Tones while finishing up his own album, a 2005 Beach Boys paean released under the rhyme-alicious name Ryan McPhun & the Ruby Suns.

“Some of the songs I had written before I moved, but I was changing very quickly,” he says. “I started getting into less straightforward stuff ... other music from all over the globe. I became less worried about style and more concerned with rhythms and earth sounds.”

That’s reflected on the Ruby Suns’ sophomore album, “Sea Lion” (a March release in the U.S. on Sub Pop), whose miasma of instrumentation, sweet melodies and sounds found in places like New Zealand’s South Island, southern Africa and Thailand make for meditations that border on hallucinations.

“It’s a very broad album,” McPhun says. "Geographically speaking.”

||| Live: The Ruby Suns perform with Le Loup and Princeton on Saturday at the Echo.

||| Download: "Tane Mahuta"

||| Download, from the Ruby Suns' debut album: "Look Out SOS!"

Photo courtesy of Sub Pop

-- Kevin Bronson

Her name is Katie White. Not Stacey, not Jane, not "her" or any of that other stuff she rap-sings in the wonderfully addictive single "That's Not My Name." White is blond, stylish, and when she's not rockin the mic, she straps on a guitar and fronts the Ting Tings, the critically acclaimed duo straight outta Salford, U.K.

Her dashing drummer, Jules De Martino, supplies backing vocals. Together, the Ting Tings have created a dynamic, fresh sound evoking '80s hooks at the right moments, all of which earned them a rightful place on year-end Top 10 critics' lists all over England in 2007.

Only problem is, unless you live in the U.K., you won't (for now) be able to buy any Ting Tings off iTunes, including "That's Not My Name." (But if you make it after the jump, there might be something special awaiting you.)

Speaking of names, in a recent interview with NME -- which recently praised the duo as being "by far the best pop band the UK has produced in years" -- White explained that the band name comes from an actual person. "I used to work for a girl called Ting Ting. We didn’t really decide to be a band but everybody said they liked us so we decided to pick a name and Ting Ting was it. Then we Googled it and found out that it meant ‘the sound of innovation on an open mind’, so we just thought screw it let’s call us that!"

Buzz Bands: The Forward’s new direction

Before setting out to make their mark on the post-punk landscape, Leonard Jackson and Ian Schaeffer --  pals from their day jobs at Guitar Center -- left their marks on plenty of bottles of beer. “We were drinking buddies first, and we’d sit around and philosophize about how things should be,” Jackson says. “Once we’d created our utopian band model, we realized there was no other solution but to do it.”

Now, singer-guitarist Jackson and bassist Schaeffer, along with guitarist Greg Smith and drummer Tom DuPree III, have moved forward as the Forward. Their debut album, “Nothing But Teeth” (due Sept. 9), showcases the quartet’s quick-hitting guitars, agitated rhythms and the wry, literate songs Jackson conceived during long hours of hawking merchandise that helped other artists realize their dreams.

Speidi's less Iago-ish half has a new club-pop joint that blows the unfortunate "Higher" away easily. Yet the wantonly Euro-dancey "One More Drink" still sounds like what I imagine a breakfast smoothie of Adderall, Froot Loops, Plan B and the hot tears of regret tastes like. Happy Fourth of July, kids.

-- August Brown

Photo of Heidi Montag by Jeff Gentner/ Getty Images

The bad news out of western China just gets worse after Monday's earthquake in the Sichuan province. So, with a bit of a heavy heart, we offer this new track from the bluegrass singer-songwriter Abigail Washburn, who frequently writes and performs in Mandarin. "Great Big Wall in China" is off her forthcoming self-titled album with the Sparrow Quartet (when Bela Fleck is your sideman, you know you're doing something right), and it's a lovely, restless and occasionally sinister elaboration on the genre of banjo-driven Sino-folk she all but invented on her album "Song of the Traveling Daughter." Her set at last year's Stagecoach Festival was an absolute joy to watch, but recent events just make this sad song hit even harder.

Abigail Washburn: Great Big Wall in China

-August Brown

Photo by Bob Delevante

Obsessive "Donnie Darko"-philes (or, we suppose, fans of "Southland Tales" too) who keep up with writer/director Richard Kelly's blog saw this little update on production of his new Cameron Diaz-James Marsden nail-biter "The Box":

"The last few months have been an amazing time for us on the editing of
'The Box.' We're starting to work with a very famous band who is honoring us with
being the first filmmakers they've ever scored a film with. Hopefully there will be an announcement soon about who it is!"

If you're inclined to trust the website of noted producer whiz Markus Dravs (which we are), that band is none other than Canada's favorite apocalypse-minded hurdy-gurdy purveyors, Arcade Fire. It would be the first film collaboration for the band, and odds are fairly high that Win Butler's less-than-optimistic worldview (and Eli Sunday-inspired wardrobe) will be a prefect fit for Kelly's affection for prophetic outsiders.

-- August Brown

Photo by Jim Dyson / Getty Images

Rarely has a debut album sounded so fresh and endearing — without your suspecting the writer copped somebody’s songbook — as the Morning Benders’ “Talking Through Tin Cans.”

The Berkeley-based quartet metes out three-minute dollops of youthful pining as if love songs were something they just sprang on the Internet. “We’re just looking to do something that sounds authentic,” says frontman Chris Chu, an unabashed fan of classic pop who, at 21, appears years away from his first encounter with a razor. “Most of the music I look back on [fondly] has an honest emotion.”

The Benders’ formula of scratchy-but-tasteful guitars, agile melodies and wizened-not-whiny sentiment evolved as if by fate. Chu, a Santa Monica native (in fact, three of the four Benders have SoCal roots), “picked up a friend’s guitar when I was home sick from school one day and started playing,” he says.

Off he went to Cal, where he eventually found Joe Ferrell (guitars, keyboards), Julian Harmon (drums) and, now, Tim Or (who has replaced original bassist David Perales). “After I moved up to Berkeley, I just started writing songs — yeah, I had some girl troubles, but I had some good things happen too,” Chu says. “All the songs are kind of a snapshot of what was going on at the time.”

And to gauge from Chu’s enthusiasm, the album, released this week by fledgling label +1 Records, is just the start. “We love playing music, and so far everything about it is exactly how I wanted it to be,” he says. “We want to make another album already.”

||| Live: The Morning Benders play their album-release show Thursday night at the Echo (free to those who buy the album at Virgin Megastore or at the label's website). (They will also be back in L.A. on May 19, opening for the Kooks at the Wiltern.)

||| Download: "Boarded Doors."

||| Watch: The Morning Benders' new video for "Boarded Doors" is the brainchild of Daniel Stessen, creative director of the L.A. art-film-music collective People Food. Given Chu's boyish looks, it's, um, a perfect fit.

Upcoming in L.A.
Speaking of Stessen, he and his People Food cohorts (including the Gray Kid) will perform Saturday night at downtown's Redwood Bar. ... Local psych-poppers the Parson Red Heads celebrate the release of their new EP, "Owl & Timber," with a show Friday at Spaceland. ... And Saturday at Spaceland, Sky Parade marks the release of its new EP,  "High on Desire," with a show supporting impressive U.K. newcomers Air Traffic. ... The Donnas' 15th anniversary show Friday at the Viper Room is sold out -- as is Saturday's show at the Troubadour featuring the Duke Spirit, whose new album, "Neptune," measures up as one of the most solid rock records so far this year. ... Electro-poppers Casxio just released a free four-song digital EP (go to their website for the goods) and have a show tonight at UC Riverside (and May 15 at the Continental Room in Fullerton). ... With its second EP, "Bloomsbury," just out, Princeton plays a support slot for Le Switch's residency on Monday at the Echo. ... And it's a big night in store Monday at Indie 103.1's weekly shindig at the Viper Room -- Everest (its debut "Ghost Notes" just out) and Film School are on the bill.

-- Kevin Bronson

Morning Benders photo by Timothy Norris

To listen to the mix in its entirety, click here!

LA Riots don’t do nuance. The Riots’ remixes for A-list electro acts such as Justice, Hot Chip, VHS or Beta and Kid Sister break the faders on every ingredient that matters to a packed dance floor: crunching bass, anthemic hooks and jittery edits that have come to define crossover dance music in the last year.The duo recently signed on with MSTRKRFT’s management and got a record deal with Fools Gold, the label co-owned by Kanye West’s longtime DJ, A-Trak, which has been running the table on flinty hip-hop and electronica. But the Riots made time to craft an L.A. Times-exclusive DJ mix of artists performing at Coachella that they feel define the electro scene this year. It’s 20 minutes of relentless party-starting cuts from France, England, Australia, Brazil and exotic Canada that you can expect to hear in this year’s dance tent, and features several of their own hotly tipped remixes of Coachella artists. Here's what the Riots had to say about what went into this mix:

"We chose artists that we feel directly relate to what's going on in electronic music today. It was pretty easy with the lineup at this year's Coachella because so many of the artists are staples in our sets. Every single song we used in this mix we've played in the clubs recently."

Polish your Wayfarers, don your gold-lamé swimsuit and remember that Paris doesn’t have a lockdown on sweat, sex and techno. We do just fine on our own here.

Hot Chip -- "Ready for the Floor (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Kavinsky -- "Testarossa Autodrive (sebastiAn Remix)" Buy it here.

Justice -- "DVNO (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Bonde Do Role -- "Gasolina (Radioclit remix)" Buy it here.

Uffie -- "Hot Chick" Buy it here.

M.I.A -- "Bamboo Banga" Buy it here.

Kid Sister -- "Control (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Cut Copy -- "Saturdays" Buy it here.

Chromeo -- "Needy Girl (Vandalism Remix)" Buy it here.

Boys Noize -- "oh! (A-Trak Remix)" Buy it here.

Justice -- "The Party (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Yelle -- "A Cause des Garcons" Buy it here.

Tegan and Sara -- "Back in Your Head (Morgan Page Remix)" Buy it here.

Photo: ronysphotobooth

Just think of the Ruby Suns’ sound — an arrestingly wide-ranging palette of psych-pop, island flavors, Asian exotica and traditional African music — as influenced mostly by frontman Ryan McPhun’s dual citizenship.

McPhun, 25, was reared in Ventura, the son of a Kiwi father and an American mother, a fan of bands such as the Beatles, Sloan, Jason Falkner, obsessive about the Beach Boys and Nirvana, “and a little bit too shy for a lot of the emo and hard-core stuff” that was popular with his friends, he says.

Off McPhun went to New Zealand, where after a short stint at university, he traveled the world and settled in Auckland. He fell in with pop artists on Kiwi indie label Lil’ Chief and played with the Brunettes and the Tokey Tones while finishing up his own album, a 2005 Beach Boys paean released under the rhyme-alicious name Ryan McPhun & the Ruby Suns.

“Some of the songs I had written before I moved, but I was changing very quickly,” he says. “I started getting into less straightforward stuff ... other music from all over the globe. I became less worried about style and more concerned with rhythms and earth sounds.”

That’s reflected on the Ruby Suns’ sophomore album, “Sea Lion” (a March release in the U.S. on Sub Pop), whose miasma of instrumentation, sweet melodies and sounds found in places like New Zealand’s South Island, southern Africa and Thailand make for meditations that border on hallucinations.

“It’s a very broad album,” McPhun says. "Geographically speaking.”

||| Live: The Ruby Suns perform with Le Loup and Princeton on Saturday at the Echo.

||| Download: "Tane Mahuta"

||| Download, from the Ruby Suns' debut album: "Look Out SOS!"

Photo courtesy of Sub Pop

-- Kevin Bronson

Her name is Katie White. Not Stacey, not Jane, not "her" or any of that other stuff she rap-sings in the wonderfully addictive single "That's Not My Name." White is blond, stylish, and when she's not rockin the mic, she straps on a guitar and fronts the Ting Tings, the critically acclaimed duo straight outta Salford, U.K.

Her dashing drummer, Jules De Martino, supplies backing vocals. Together, the Ting Tings have created a dynamic, fresh sound evoking '80s hooks at the right moments, all of which earned them a rightful place on year-end Top 10 critics' lists all over England in 2007.

Only problem is, unless you live in the U.K., you won't (for now) be able to buy any Ting Tings off iTunes, including "That's Not My Name." (But if you make it after the jump, there might be something special awaiting you.)

Speaking of names, in a recent interview with NME -- which recently praised the duo as being "by far the best pop band the UK has produced in years" -- White explained that the band name comes from an actual person. "I used to work for a girl called Ting Ting. We didn’t really decide to be a band but everybody said they liked us so we decided to pick a name and Ting Ting was it. Then we Googled it and found out that it meant ‘the sound of innovation on an open mind’, so we just thought screw it let’s call us that!"

Because we love America, here’s the new Heidi Montag single

Speidi's less Iago-ish half has a new club-pop joint that blows the unfortunate "Higher" away easily. Yet the wantonly Euro-dancey "One More Drink" still sounds like what I imagine a breakfast smoothie of Adderall, Froot Loops, Plan B and the hot tears of regret tastes like. Happy Fourth of July, kids.

-- August Brown

Photo of Heidi Montag by Jeff Gentner/ Getty Images

The bad news out of western China just gets worse after Monday's earthquake in the Sichuan province. So, with a bit of a heavy heart, we offer this new track from the bluegrass singer-songwriter Abigail Washburn, who frequently writes and performs in Mandarin. "Great Big Wall in China" is off her forthcoming self-titled album with the Sparrow Quartet (when Bela Fleck is your sideman, you know you're doing something right), and it's a lovely, restless and occasionally sinister elaboration on the genre of banjo-driven Sino-folk she all but invented on her album "Song of the Traveling Daughter." Her set at last year's Stagecoach Festival was an absolute joy to watch, but recent events just make this sad song hit even harder.

Abigail Washburn: Great Big Wall in China

-August Brown

Photo by Bob Delevante

Obsessive "Donnie Darko"-philes (or, we suppose, fans of "Southland Tales" too) who keep up with writer/director Richard Kelly's blog saw this little update on production of his new Cameron Diaz-James Marsden nail-biter "The Box":

"The last few months have been an amazing time for us on the editing of
'The Box.' We're starting to work with a very famous band who is honoring us with
being the first filmmakers they've ever scored a film with. Hopefully there will be an announcement soon about who it is!"

If you're inclined to trust the website of noted producer whiz Markus Dravs (which we are), that band is none other than Canada's favorite apocalypse-minded hurdy-gurdy purveyors, Arcade Fire. It would be the first film collaboration for the band, and odds are fairly high that Win Butler's less-than-optimistic worldview (and Eli Sunday-inspired wardrobe) will be a prefect fit for Kelly's affection for prophetic outsiders.

-- August Brown

Photo by Jim Dyson / Getty Images

Rarely has a debut album sounded so fresh and endearing — without your suspecting the writer copped somebody’s songbook — as the Morning Benders’ “Talking Through Tin Cans.”

The Berkeley-based quartet metes out three-minute dollops of youthful pining as if love songs were something they just sprang on the Internet. “We’re just looking to do something that sounds authentic,” says frontman Chris Chu, an unabashed fan of classic pop who, at 21, appears years away from his first encounter with a razor. “Most of the music I look back on [fondly] has an honest emotion.”

The Benders’ formula of scratchy-but-tasteful guitars, agile melodies and wizened-not-whiny sentiment evolved as if by fate. Chu, a Santa Monica native (in fact, three of the four Benders have SoCal roots), “picked up a friend’s guitar when I was home sick from school one day and started playing,” he says.

Off he went to Cal, where he eventually found Joe Ferrell (guitars, keyboards), Julian Harmon (drums) and, now, Tim Or (who has replaced original bassist David Perales). “After I moved up to Berkeley, I just started writing songs — yeah, I had some girl troubles, but I had some good things happen too,” Chu says. “All the songs are kind of a snapshot of what was going on at the time.”

And to gauge from Chu’s enthusiasm, the album, released this week by fledgling label +1 Records, is just the start. “We love playing music, and so far everything about it is exactly how I wanted it to be,” he says. “We want to make another album already.”

||| Live: The Morning Benders play their album-release show Thursday night at the Echo (free to those who buy the album at Virgin Megastore or at the label's website). (They will also be back in L.A. on May 19, opening for the Kooks at the Wiltern.)

||| Download: "Boarded Doors."

||| Watch: The Morning Benders' new video for "Boarded Doors" is the brainchild of Daniel Stessen, creative director of the L.A. art-film-music collective People Food. Given Chu's boyish looks, it's, um, a perfect fit.

Upcoming in L.A.
Speaking of Stessen, he and his People Food cohorts (including the Gray Kid) will perform Saturday night at downtown's Redwood Bar. ... Local psych-poppers the Parson Red Heads celebrate the release of their new EP, "Owl & Timber," with a show Friday at Spaceland. ... And Saturday at Spaceland, Sky Parade marks the release of its new EP,  "High on Desire," with a show supporting impressive U.K. newcomers Air Traffic. ... The Donnas' 15th anniversary show Friday at the Viper Room is sold out -- as is Saturday's show at the Troubadour featuring the Duke Spirit, whose new album, "Neptune," measures up as one of the most solid rock records so far this year. ... Electro-poppers Casxio just released a free four-song digital EP (go to their website for the goods) and have a show tonight at UC Riverside (and May 15 at the Continental Room in Fullerton). ... With its second EP, "Bloomsbury," just out, Princeton plays a support slot for Le Switch's residency on Monday at the Echo. ... And it's a big night in store Monday at Indie 103.1's weekly shindig at the Viper Room -- Everest (its debut "Ghost Notes" just out) and Film School are on the bill.

-- Kevin Bronson

Morning Benders photo by Timothy Norris

To listen to the mix in its entirety, click here!

LA Riots don’t do nuance. The Riots’ remixes for A-list electro acts such as Justice, Hot Chip, VHS or Beta and Kid Sister break the faders on every ingredient that matters to a packed dance floor: crunching bass, anthemic hooks and jittery edits that have come to define crossover dance music in the last year.The duo recently signed on with MSTRKRFT’s management and got a record deal with Fools Gold, the label co-owned by Kanye West’s longtime DJ, A-Trak, which has been running the table on flinty hip-hop and electronica. But the Riots made time to craft an L.A. Times-exclusive DJ mix of artists performing at Coachella that they feel define the electro scene this year. It’s 20 minutes of relentless party-starting cuts from France, England, Australia, Brazil and exotic Canada that you can expect to hear in this year’s dance tent, and features several of their own hotly tipped remixes of Coachella artists. Here's what the Riots had to say about what went into this mix:

"We chose artists that we feel directly relate to what's going on in electronic music today. It was pretty easy with the lineup at this year's Coachella because so many of the artists are staples in our sets. Every single song we used in this mix we've played in the clubs recently."

Polish your Wayfarers, don your gold-lamé swimsuit and remember that Paris doesn’t have a lockdown on sweat, sex and techno. We do just fine on our own here.

Hot Chip -- "Ready for the Floor (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Kavinsky -- "Testarossa Autodrive (sebastiAn Remix)" Buy it here.

Justice -- "DVNO (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Bonde Do Role -- "Gasolina (Radioclit remix)" Buy it here.

Uffie -- "Hot Chick" Buy it here.

M.I.A -- "Bamboo Banga" Buy it here.

Kid Sister -- "Control (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Cut Copy -- "Saturdays" Buy it here.

Chromeo -- "Needy Girl (Vandalism Remix)" Buy it here.

Boys Noize -- "oh! (A-Trak Remix)" Buy it here.

Justice -- "The Party (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Yelle -- "A Cause des Garcons" Buy it here.

Tegan and Sara -- "Back in Your Head (Morgan Page Remix)" Buy it here.

Photo: ronysphotobooth

Just think of the Ruby Suns’ sound — an arrestingly wide-ranging palette of psych-pop, island flavors, Asian exotica and traditional African music — as influenced mostly by frontman Ryan McPhun’s dual citizenship.

McPhun, 25, was reared in Ventura, the son of a Kiwi father and an American mother, a fan of bands such as the Beatles, Sloan, Jason Falkner, obsessive about the Beach Boys and Nirvana, “and a little bit too shy for a lot of the emo and hard-core stuff” that was popular with his friends, he says.

Off McPhun went to New Zealand, where after a short stint at university, he traveled the world and settled in Auckland. He fell in with pop artists on Kiwi indie label Lil’ Chief and played with the Brunettes and the Tokey Tones while finishing up his own album, a 2005 Beach Boys paean released under the rhyme-alicious name Ryan McPhun & the Ruby Suns.

“Some of the songs I had written before I moved, but I was changing very quickly,” he says. “I started getting into less straightforward stuff ... other music from all over the globe. I became less worried about style and more concerned with rhythms and earth sounds.”

That’s reflected on the Ruby Suns’ sophomore album, “Sea Lion” (a March release in the U.S. on Sub Pop), whose miasma of instrumentation, sweet melodies and sounds found in places like New Zealand’s South Island, southern Africa and Thailand make for meditations that border on hallucinations.

“It’s a very broad album,” McPhun says. "Geographically speaking.”

||| Live: The Ruby Suns perform with Le Loup and Princeton on Saturday at the Echo.

||| Download: "Tane Mahuta"

||| Download, from the Ruby Suns' debut album: "Look Out SOS!"

Photo courtesy of Sub Pop

-- Kevin Bronson

Her name is Katie White. Not Stacey, not Jane, not "her" or any of that other stuff she rap-sings in the wonderfully addictive single "That's Not My Name." White is blond, stylish, and when she's not rockin the mic, she straps on a guitar and fronts the Ting Tings, the critically acclaimed duo straight outta Salford, U.K.

Her dashing drummer, Jules De Martino, supplies backing vocals. Together, the Ting Tings have created a dynamic, fresh sound evoking '80s hooks at the right moments, all of which earned them a rightful place on year-end Top 10 critics' lists all over England in 2007.

Only problem is, unless you live in the U.K., you won't (for now) be able to buy any Ting Tings off iTunes, including "That's Not My Name." (But if you make it after the jump, there might be something special awaiting you.)

Speaking of names, in a recent interview with NME -- which recently praised the duo as being "by far the best pop band the UK has produced in years" -- White explained that the band name comes from an actual person. "I used to work for a girl called Ting Ting. We didn’t really decide to be a band but everybody said they liked us so we decided to pick a name and Ting Ting was it. Then we Googled it and found out that it meant ‘the sound of innovation on an open mind’, so we just thought screw it let’s call us that!"

New Abigail Washburn: “Great Big Wall in China”

The bad news out of western China just gets worse after Monday's earthquake in the Sichuan province. So, with a bit of a heavy heart, we offer this new track from the bluegrass singer-songwriter Abigail Washburn, who frequently writes and performs in Mandarin. "Great Big Wall in China" is off her forthcoming self-titled album with the Sparrow Quartet (when Bela Fleck is your sideman, you know you're doing something right), and it's a lovely, restless and occasionally sinister elaboration on the genre of banjo-driven Sino-folk she all but invented on her album "Song of the Traveling Daughter." Her set at last year's Stagecoach Festival was an absolute joy to watch, but recent events just make this sad song hit even harder.

Abigail Washburn: Great Big Wall in China

-August Brown

Photo by Bob Delevante

Obsessive "Donnie Darko"-philes (or, we suppose, fans of "Southland Tales" too) who keep up with writer/director Richard Kelly's blog saw this little update on production of his new Cameron Diaz-James Marsden nail-biter "The Box":

"The last few months have been an amazing time for us on the editing of
'The Box.' We're starting to work with a very famous band who is honoring us with
being the first filmmakers they've ever scored a film with. Hopefully there will be an announcement soon about who it is!"

If you're inclined to trust the website of noted producer whiz Markus Dravs (which we are), that band is none other than Canada's favorite apocalypse-minded hurdy-gurdy purveyors, Arcade Fire. It would be the first film collaboration for the band, and odds are fairly high that Win Butler's less-than-optimistic worldview (and Eli Sunday-inspired wardrobe) will be a prefect fit for Kelly's affection for prophetic outsiders.

-- August Brown

Photo by Jim Dyson / Getty Images

Rarely has a debut album sounded so fresh and endearing — without your suspecting the writer copped somebody’s songbook — as the Morning Benders’ “Talking Through Tin Cans.”

The Berkeley-based quartet metes out three-minute dollops of youthful pining as if love songs were something they just sprang on the Internet. “We’re just looking to do something that sounds authentic,” says frontman Chris Chu, an unabashed fan of classic pop who, at 21, appears years away from his first encounter with a razor. “Most of the music I look back on [fondly] has an honest emotion.”

The Benders’ formula of scratchy-but-tasteful guitars, agile melodies and wizened-not-whiny sentiment evolved as if by fate. Chu, a Santa Monica native (in fact, three of the four Benders have SoCal roots), “picked up a friend’s guitar when I was home sick from school one day and started playing,” he says.

Off he went to Cal, where he eventually found Joe Ferrell (guitars, keyboards), Julian Harmon (drums) and, now, Tim Or (who has replaced original bassist David Perales). “After I moved up to Berkeley, I just started writing songs — yeah, I had some girl troubles, but I had some good things happen too,” Chu says. “All the songs are kind of a snapshot of what was going on at the time.”

And to gauge from Chu’s enthusiasm, the album, released this week by fledgling label +1 Records, is just the start. “We love playing music, and so far everything about it is exactly how I wanted it to be,” he says. “We want to make another album already.”

||| Live: The Morning Benders play their album-release show Thursday night at the Echo (free to those who buy the album at Virgin Megastore or at the label's website). (They will also be back in L.A. on May 19, opening for the Kooks at the Wiltern.)

||| Download: "Boarded Doors."

||| Watch: The Morning Benders' new video for "Boarded Doors" is the brainchild of Daniel Stessen, creative director of the L.A. art-film-music collective People Food. Given Chu's boyish looks, it's, um, a perfect fit.

Upcoming in L.A.
Speaking of Stessen, he and his People Food cohorts (including the Gray Kid) will perform Saturday night at downtown's Redwood Bar. ... Local psych-poppers the Parson Red Heads celebrate the release of their new EP, "Owl & Timber," with a show Friday at Spaceland. ... And Saturday at Spaceland, Sky Parade marks the release of its new EP,  "High on Desire," with a show supporting impressive U.K. newcomers Air Traffic. ... The Donnas' 15th anniversary show Friday at the Viper Room is sold out -- as is Saturday's show at the Troubadour featuring the Duke Spirit, whose new album, "Neptune," measures up as one of the most solid rock records so far this year. ... Electro-poppers Casxio just released a free four-song digital EP (go to their website for the goods) and have a show tonight at UC Riverside (and May 15 at the Continental Room in Fullerton). ... With its second EP, "Bloomsbury," just out, Princeton plays a support slot for Le Switch's residency on Monday at the Echo. ... And it's a big night in store Monday at Indie 103.1's weekly shindig at the Viper Room -- Everest (its debut "Ghost Notes" just out) and Film School are on the bill.

-- Kevin Bronson

Morning Benders photo by Timothy Norris

To listen to the mix in its entirety, click here!

LA Riots don’t do nuance. The Riots’ remixes for A-list electro acts such as Justice, Hot Chip, VHS or Beta and Kid Sister break the faders on every ingredient that matters to a packed dance floor: crunching bass, anthemic hooks and jittery edits that have come to define crossover dance music in the last year.The duo recently signed on with MSTRKRFT’s management and got a record deal with Fools Gold, the label co-owned by Kanye West’s longtime DJ, A-Trak, which has been running the table on flinty hip-hop and electronica. But the Riots made time to craft an L.A. Times-exclusive DJ mix of artists performing at Coachella that they feel define the electro scene this year. It’s 20 minutes of relentless party-starting cuts from France, England, Australia, Brazil and exotic Canada that you can expect to hear in this year’s dance tent, and features several of their own hotly tipped remixes of Coachella artists. Here's what the Riots had to say about what went into this mix:

"We chose artists that we feel directly relate to what's going on in electronic music today. It was pretty easy with the lineup at this year's Coachella because so many of the artists are staples in our sets. Every single song we used in this mix we've played in the clubs recently."

Polish your Wayfarers, don your gold-lamé swimsuit and remember that Paris doesn’t have a lockdown on sweat, sex and techno. We do just fine on our own here.

Hot Chip -- "Ready for the Floor (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Kavinsky -- "Testarossa Autodrive (sebastiAn Remix)" Buy it here.

Justice -- "DVNO (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Bonde Do Role -- "Gasolina (Radioclit remix)" Buy it here.

Uffie -- "Hot Chick" Buy it here.

M.I.A -- "Bamboo Banga" Buy it here.

Kid Sister -- "Control (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Cut Copy -- "Saturdays" Buy it here.

Chromeo -- "Needy Girl (Vandalism Remix)" Buy it here.

Boys Noize -- "oh! (A-Trak Remix)" Buy it here.

Justice -- "The Party (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Yelle -- "A Cause des Garcons" Buy it here.

Tegan and Sara -- "Back in Your Head (Morgan Page Remix)" Buy it here.

Photo: ronysphotobooth

Just think of the Ruby Suns’ sound — an arrestingly wide-ranging palette of psych-pop, island flavors, Asian exotica and traditional African music — as influenced mostly by frontman Ryan McPhun’s dual citizenship.

McPhun, 25, was reared in Ventura, the son of a Kiwi father and an American mother, a fan of bands such as the Beatles, Sloan, Jason Falkner, obsessive about the Beach Boys and Nirvana, “and a little bit too shy for a lot of the emo and hard-core stuff” that was popular with his friends, he says.

Off McPhun went to New Zealand, where after a short stint at university, he traveled the world and settled in Auckland. He fell in with pop artists on Kiwi indie label Lil’ Chief and played with the Brunettes and the Tokey Tones while finishing up his own album, a 2005 Beach Boys paean released under the rhyme-alicious name Ryan McPhun & the Ruby Suns.

“Some of the songs I had written before I moved, but I was changing very quickly,” he says. “I started getting into less straightforward stuff ... other music from all over the globe. I became less worried about style and more concerned with rhythms and earth sounds.”

That’s reflected on the Ruby Suns’ sophomore album, “Sea Lion” (a March release in the U.S. on Sub Pop), whose miasma of instrumentation, sweet melodies and sounds found in places like New Zealand’s South Island, southern Africa and Thailand make for meditations that border on hallucinations.

“It’s a very broad album,” McPhun says. "Geographically speaking.”

||| Live: The Ruby Suns perform with Le Loup and Princeton on Saturday at the Echo.

||| Download: "Tane Mahuta"

||| Download, from the Ruby Suns' debut album: "Look Out SOS!"

Photo courtesy of Sub Pop

-- Kevin Bronson

Her name is Katie White. Not Stacey, not Jane, not "her" or any of that other stuff she rap-sings in the wonderfully addictive single "That's Not My Name." White is blond, stylish, and when she's not rockin the mic, she straps on a guitar and fronts the Ting Tings, the critically acclaimed duo straight outta Salford, U.K.

Her dashing drummer, Jules De Martino, supplies backing vocals. Together, the Ting Tings have created a dynamic, fresh sound evoking '80s hooks at the right moments, all of which earned them a rightful place on year-end Top 10 critics' lists all over England in 2007.

Only problem is, unless you live in the U.K., you won't (for now) be able to buy any Ting Tings off iTunes, including "That's Not My Name." (But if you make it after the jump, there might be something special awaiting you.)

Speaking of names, in a recent interview with NME -- which recently praised the duo as being "by far the best pop band the UK has produced in years" -- White explained that the band name comes from an actual person. "I used to work for a girl called Ting Ting. We didn’t really decide to be a band but everybody said they liked us so we decided to pick a name and Ting Ting was it. Then we Googled it and found out that it meant ‘the sound of innovation on an open mind’, so we just thought screw it let’s call us that!"

Arcade Fire to score new Richard Kelly film?

Obsessive "Donnie Darko"-philes (or, we suppose, fans of "Southland Tales" too) who keep up with writer/director Richard Kelly's blog saw this little update on production of his new Cameron Diaz-James Marsden nail-biter "The Box":

"The last few months have been an amazing time for us on the editing of
'The Box.' We're starting to work with a very famous band who is honoring us with
being the first filmmakers they've ever scored a film with. Hopefully there will be an announcement soon about who it is!"

If you're inclined to trust the website of noted producer whiz Markus Dravs (which we are), that band is none other than Canada's favorite apocalypse-minded hurdy-gurdy purveyors, Arcade Fire. It would be the first film collaboration for the band, and odds are fairly high that Win Butler's less-than-optimistic worldview (and Eli Sunday-inspired wardrobe) will be a prefect fit for Kelly's affection for prophetic outsiders.

-- August Brown

Photo by Jim Dyson / Getty Images

Rarely has a debut album sounded so fresh and endearing — without your suspecting the writer copped somebody’s songbook — as the Morning Benders’ “Talking Through Tin Cans.”

The Berkeley-based quartet metes out three-minute dollops of youthful pining as if love songs were something they just sprang on the Internet. “We’re just looking to do something that sounds authentic,” says frontman Chris Chu, an unabashed fan of classic pop who, at 21, appears years away from his first encounter with a razor. “Most of the music I look back on [fondly] has an honest emotion.”

The Benders’ formula of scratchy-but-tasteful guitars, agile melodies and wizened-not-whiny sentiment evolved as if by fate. Chu, a Santa Monica native (in fact, three of the four Benders have SoCal roots), “picked up a friend’s guitar when I was home sick from school one day and started playing,” he says.

Off he went to Cal, where he eventually found Joe Ferrell (guitars, keyboards), Julian Harmon (drums) and, now, Tim Or (who has replaced original bassist David Perales). “After I moved up to Berkeley, I just started writing songs — yeah, I had some girl troubles, but I had some good things happen too,” Chu says. “All the songs are kind of a snapshot of what was going on at the time.”

And to gauge from Chu’s enthusiasm, the album, released this week by fledgling label +1 Records, is just the start. “We love playing music, and so far everything about it is exactly how I wanted it to be,” he says. “We want to make another album already.”

||| Live: The Morning Benders play their album-release show Thursday night at the Echo (free to those who buy the album at Virgin Megastore or at the label's website). (They will also be back in L.A. on May 19, opening for the Kooks at the Wiltern.)

||| Download: "Boarded Doors."

||| Watch: The Morning Benders' new video for "Boarded Doors" is the brainchild of Daniel Stessen, creative director of the L.A. art-film-music collective People Food. Given Chu's boyish looks, it's, um, a perfect fit.

Upcoming in L.A.
Speaking of Stessen, he and his People Food cohorts (including the Gray Kid) will perform Saturday night at downtown's Redwood Bar. ... Local psych-poppers the Parson Red Heads celebrate the release of their new EP, "Owl & Timber," with a show Friday at Spaceland. ... And Saturday at Spaceland, Sky Parade marks the release of its new EP,  "High on Desire," with a show supporting impressive U.K. newcomers Air Traffic. ... The Donnas' 15th anniversary show Friday at the Viper Room is sold out -- as is Saturday's show at the Troubadour featuring the Duke Spirit, whose new album, "Neptune," measures up as one of the most solid rock records so far this year. ... Electro-poppers Casxio just released a free four-song digital EP (go to their website for the goods) and have a show tonight at UC Riverside (and May 15 at the Continental Room in Fullerton). ... With its second EP, "Bloomsbury," just out, Princeton plays a support slot for Le Switch's residency on Monday at the Echo. ... And it's a big night in store Monday at Indie 103.1's weekly shindig at the Viper Room -- Everest (its debut "Ghost Notes" just out) and Film School are on the bill.

-- Kevin Bronson

Morning Benders photo by Timothy Norris

To listen to the mix in its entirety, click here!

LA Riots don’t do nuance. The Riots’ remixes for A-list electro acts such as Justice, Hot Chip, VHS or Beta and Kid Sister break the faders on every ingredient that matters to a packed dance floor: crunching bass, anthemic hooks and jittery edits that have come to define crossover dance music in the last year.The duo recently signed on with MSTRKRFT’s management and got a record deal with Fools Gold, the label co-owned by Kanye West’s longtime DJ, A-Trak, which has been running the table on flinty hip-hop and electronica. But the Riots made time to craft an L.A. Times-exclusive DJ mix of artists performing at Coachella that they feel define the electro scene this year. It’s 20 minutes of relentless party-starting cuts from France, England, Australia, Brazil and exotic Canada that you can expect to hear in this year’s dance tent, and features several of their own hotly tipped remixes of Coachella artists. Here's what the Riots had to say about what went into this mix:

"We chose artists that we feel directly relate to what's going on in electronic music today. It was pretty easy with the lineup at this year's Coachella because so many of the artists are staples in our sets. Every single song we used in this mix we've played in the clubs recently."

Polish your Wayfarers, don your gold-lamé swimsuit and remember that Paris doesn’t have a lockdown on sweat, sex and techno. We do just fine on our own here.

Hot Chip -- "Ready for the Floor (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Kavinsky -- "Testarossa Autodrive (sebastiAn Remix)" Buy it here.

Justice -- "DVNO (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Bonde Do Role -- "Gasolina (Radioclit remix)" Buy it here.

Uffie -- "Hot Chick" Buy it here.

M.I.A -- "Bamboo Banga" Buy it here.

Kid Sister -- "Control (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Cut Copy -- "Saturdays" Buy it here.

Chromeo -- "Needy Girl (Vandalism Remix)" Buy it here.

Boys Noize -- "oh! (A-Trak Remix)" Buy it here.

Justice -- "The Party (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Yelle -- "A Cause des Garcons" Buy it here.

Tegan and Sara -- "Back in Your Head (Morgan Page Remix)" Buy it here.

Photo: ronysphotobooth

Just think of the Ruby Suns’ sound — an arrestingly wide-ranging palette of psych-pop, island flavors, Asian exotica and traditional African music — as influenced mostly by frontman Ryan McPhun’s dual citizenship.

McPhun, 25, was reared in Ventura, the son of a Kiwi father and an American mother, a fan of bands such as the Beatles, Sloan, Jason Falkner, obsessive about the Beach Boys and Nirvana, “and a little bit too shy for a lot of the emo and hard-core stuff” that was popular with his friends, he says.

Off McPhun went to New Zealand, where after a short stint at university, he traveled the world and settled in Auckland. He fell in with pop artists on Kiwi indie label Lil’ Chief and played with the Brunettes and the Tokey Tones while finishing up his own album, a 2005 Beach Boys paean released under the rhyme-alicious name Ryan McPhun & the Ruby Suns.

“Some of the songs I had written before I moved, but I was changing very quickly,” he says. “I started getting into less straightforward stuff ... other music from all over the globe. I became less worried about style and more concerned with rhythms and earth sounds.”

That’s reflected on the Ruby Suns’ sophomore album, “Sea Lion” (a March release in the U.S. on Sub Pop), whose miasma of instrumentation, sweet melodies and sounds found in places like New Zealand’s South Island, southern Africa and Thailand make for meditations that border on hallucinations.

“It’s a very broad album,” McPhun says. "Geographically speaking.”

||| Live: The Ruby Suns perform with Le Loup and Princeton on Saturday at the Echo.

||| Download: "Tane Mahuta"

||| Download, from the Ruby Suns' debut album: "Look Out SOS!"

Photo courtesy of Sub Pop

-- Kevin Bronson

Her name is Katie White. Not Stacey, not Jane, not "her" or any of that other stuff she rap-sings in the wonderfully addictive single "That's Not My Name." White is blond, stylish, and when she's not rockin the mic, she straps on a guitar and fronts the Ting Tings, the critically acclaimed duo straight outta Salford, U.K.

Her dashing drummer, Jules De Martino, supplies backing vocals. Together, the Ting Tings have created a dynamic, fresh sound evoking '80s hooks at the right moments, all of which earned them a rightful place on year-end Top 10 critics' lists all over England in 2007.

Only problem is, unless you live in the U.K., you won't (for now) be able to buy any Ting Tings off iTunes, including "That's Not My Name." (But if you make it after the jump, there might be something special awaiting you.)

Speaking of names, in a recent interview with NME -- which recently praised the duo as being "by far the best pop band the UK has produced in years" -- White explained that the band name comes from an actual person. "I used to work for a girl called Ting Ting. We didn’t really decide to be a band but everybody said they liked us so we decided to pick a name and Ting Ting was it. Then we Googled it and found out that it meant ‘the sound of innovation on an open mind’, so we just thought screw it let’s call us that!"

Buzz Bands: The Morning Benders’ tuneful innocence

Rarely has a debut album sounded so fresh and endearing — without your suspecting the writer copped somebody’s songbook — as the Morning Benders’ “Talking Through Tin Cans.”

The Berkeley-based quartet metes out three-minute dollops of youthful pining as if love songs were something they just sprang on the Internet. “We’re just looking to do something that sounds authentic,” says frontman Chris Chu, an unabashed fan of classic pop who, at 21, appears years away from his first encounter with a razor. “Most of the music I look back on [fondly] has an honest emotion.”

The Benders’ formula of scratchy-but-tasteful guitars, agile melodies and wizened-not-whiny sentiment evolved as if by fate. Chu, a Santa Monica native (in fact, three of the four Benders have SoCal roots), “picked up a friend’s guitar when I was home sick from school one day and started playing,” he says.

Off he went to Cal, where he eventually found Joe Ferrell (guitars, keyboards), Julian Harmon (drums) and, now, Tim Or (who has replaced original bassist David Perales). “After I moved up to Berkeley, I just started writing songs — yeah, I had some girl troubles, but I had some good things happen too,” Chu says. “All the songs are kind of a snapshot of what was going on at the time.”

And to gauge from Chu’s enthusiasm, the album, released this week by fledgling label +1 Records, is just the start. “We love playing music, and so far everything about it is exactly how I wanted it to be,” he says. “We want to make another album already.”

||| Live: The Morning Benders play their album-release show Thursday night at the Echo (free to those who buy the album at Virgin Megastore or at the label's website). (They will also be back in L.A. on May 19, opening for the Kooks at the Wiltern.)

||| Download: "Boarded Doors."

||| Watch: The Morning Benders' new video for "Boarded Doors" is the brainchild of Daniel Stessen, creative director of the L.A. art-film-music collective People Food. Given Chu's boyish looks, it's, um, a perfect fit.

Upcoming in L.A.
Speaking of Stessen, he and his People Food cohorts (including the Gray Kid) will perform Saturday night at downtown's Redwood Bar. ... Local psych-poppers the Parson Red Heads celebrate the release of their new EP, "Owl & Timber," with a show Friday at Spaceland. ... And Saturday at Spaceland, Sky Parade marks the release of its new EP,  "High on Desire," with a show supporting impressive U.K. newcomers Air Traffic. ... The Donnas' 15th anniversary show Friday at the Viper Room is sold out -- as is Saturday's show at the Troubadour featuring the Duke Spirit, whose new album, "Neptune," measures up as one of the most solid rock records so far this year. ... Electro-poppers Casxio just released a free four-song digital EP (go to their website for the goods) and have a show tonight at UC Riverside (and May 15 at the Continental Room in Fullerton). ... With its second EP, "Bloomsbury," just out, Princeton plays a support slot for Le Switch's residency on Monday at the Echo. ... And it's a big night in store Monday at Indie 103.1's weekly shindig at the Viper Room -- Everest (its debut "Ghost Notes" just out) and Film School are on the bill.

-- Kevin Bronson

Morning Benders photo by Timothy Norris

To listen to the mix in its entirety, click here!

LA Riots don’t do nuance. The Riots’ remixes for A-list electro acts such as Justice, Hot Chip, VHS or Beta and Kid Sister break the faders on every ingredient that matters to a packed dance floor: crunching bass, anthemic hooks and jittery edits that have come to define crossover dance music in the last year.The duo recently signed on with MSTRKRFT’s management and got a record deal with Fools Gold, the label co-owned by Kanye West’s longtime DJ, A-Trak, which has been running the table on flinty hip-hop and electronica. But the Riots made time to craft an L.A. Times-exclusive DJ mix of artists performing at Coachella that they feel define the electro scene this year. It’s 20 minutes of relentless party-starting cuts from France, England, Australia, Brazil and exotic Canada that you can expect to hear in this year’s dance tent, and features several of their own hotly tipped remixes of Coachella artists. Here's what the Riots had to say about what went into this mix:

"We chose artists that we feel directly relate to what's going on in electronic music today. It was pretty easy with the lineup at this year's Coachella because so many of the artists are staples in our sets. Every single song we used in this mix we've played in the clubs recently."

Polish your Wayfarers, don your gold-lamé swimsuit and remember that Paris doesn’t have a lockdown on sweat, sex and techno. We do just fine on our own here.

Hot Chip -- "Ready for the Floor (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Kavinsky -- "Testarossa Autodrive (sebastiAn Remix)" Buy it here.

Justice -- "DVNO (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Bonde Do Role -- "Gasolina (Radioclit remix)" Buy it here.

Uffie -- "Hot Chick" Buy it here.

M.I.A -- "Bamboo Banga" Buy it here.

Kid Sister -- "Control (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Cut Copy -- "Saturdays" Buy it here.

Chromeo -- "Needy Girl (Vandalism Remix)" Buy it here.

Boys Noize -- "oh! (A-Trak Remix)" Buy it here.

Justice -- "The Party (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Yelle -- "A Cause des Garcons" Buy it here.

Tegan and Sara -- "Back in Your Head (Morgan Page Remix)" Buy it here.

Photo: ronysphotobooth

Just think of the Ruby Suns’ sound — an arrestingly wide-ranging palette of psych-pop, island flavors, Asian exotica and traditional African music — as influenced mostly by frontman Ryan McPhun’s dual citizenship.

McPhun, 25, was reared in Ventura, the son of a Kiwi father and an American mother, a fan of bands such as the Beatles, Sloan, Jason Falkner, obsessive about the Beach Boys and Nirvana, “and a little bit too shy for a lot of the emo and hard-core stuff” that was popular with his friends, he says.

Off McPhun went to New Zealand, where after a short stint at university, he traveled the world and settled in Auckland. He fell in with pop artists on Kiwi indie label Lil’ Chief and played with the Brunettes and the Tokey Tones while finishing up his own album, a 2005 Beach Boys paean released under the rhyme-alicious name Ryan McPhun & the Ruby Suns.

“Some of the songs I had written before I moved, but I was changing very quickly,” he says. “I started getting into less straightforward stuff ... other music from all over the globe. I became less worried about style and more concerned with rhythms and earth sounds.”

That’s reflected on the Ruby Suns’ sophomore album, “Sea Lion” (a March release in the U.S. on Sub Pop), whose miasma of instrumentation, sweet melodies and sounds found in places like New Zealand’s South Island, southern Africa and Thailand make for meditations that border on hallucinations.

“It’s a very broad album,” McPhun says. "Geographically speaking.”

||| Live: The Ruby Suns perform with Le Loup and Princeton on Saturday at the Echo.

||| Download: "Tane Mahuta"

||| Download, from the Ruby Suns' debut album: "Look Out SOS!"

Photo courtesy of Sub Pop

-- Kevin Bronson

Her name is Katie White. Not Stacey, not Jane, not "her" or any of that other stuff she rap-sings in the wonderfully addictive single "That's Not My Name." White is blond, stylish, and when she's not rockin the mic, she straps on a guitar and fronts the Ting Tings, the critically acclaimed duo straight outta Salford, U.K.

Her dashing drummer, Jules De Martino, supplies backing vocals. Together, the Ting Tings have created a dynamic, fresh sound evoking '80s hooks at the right moments, all of which earned them a rightful place on year-end Top 10 critics' lists all over England in 2007.

Only problem is, unless you live in the U.K., you won't (for now) be able to buy any Ting Tings off iTunes, including "That's Not My Name." (But if you make it after the jump, there might be something special awaiting you.)

Speaking of names, in a recent interview with NME -- which recently praised the duo as being "by far the best pop band the UK has produced in years" -- White explained that the band name comes from an actual person. "I used to work for a girl called Ting Ting. We didn’t really decide to be a band but everybody said they liked us so we decided to pick a name and Ting Ting was it. Then we Googled it and found out that it meant ‘the sound of innovation on an open mind’, so we just thought screw it let’s call us that!"

LA Riots’ exclusive Coachella DJ mix

To listen to the mix in its entirety, click here!

LA Riots don’t do nuance. The Riots’ remixes for A-list electro acts such as Justice, Hot Chip, VHS or Beta and Kid Sister break the faders on every ingredient that matters to a packed dance floor: crunching bass, anthemic hooks and jittery edits that have come to define crossover dance music in the last year.The duo recently signed on with MSTRKRFT’s management and got a record deal with Fools Gold, the label co-owned by Kanye West’s longtime DJ, A-Trak, which has been running the table on flinty hip-hop and electronica. But the Riots made time to craft an L.A. Times-exclusive DJ mix of artists performing at Coachella that they feel define the electro scene this year. It’s 20 minutes of relentless party-starting cuts from France, England, Australia, Brazil and exotic Canada that you can expect to hear in this year’s dance tent, and features several of their own hotly tipped remixes of Coachella artists. Here's what the Riots had to say about what went into this mix:

"We chose artists that we feel directly relate to what's going on in electronic music today. It was pretty easy with the lineup at this year's Coachella because so many of the artists are staples in our sets. Every single song we used in this mix we've played in the clubs recently."

Polish your Wayfarers, don your gold-lamé swimsuit and remember that Paris doesn’t have a lockdown on sweat, sex and techno. We do just fine on our own here.

Hot Chip -- "Ready for the Floor (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Kavinsky -- "Testarossa Autodrive (sebastiAn Remix)" Buy it here.

Justice -- "DVNO (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Bonde Do Role -- "Gasolina (Radioclit remix)" Buy it here.

Uffie -- "Hot Chick" Buy it here.

M.I.A -- "Bamboo Banga" Buy it here.

Kid Sister -- "Control (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Cut Copy -- "Saturdays" Buy it here.

Chromeo -- "Needy Girl (Vandalism Remix)" Buy it here.

Boys Noize -- "oh! (A-Trak Remix)" Buy it here.

Justice -- "The Party (LA Riots Remix)" Buy it here.

Yelle -- "A Cause des Garcons" Buy it here.

Tegan and Sara -- "Back in Your Head (Morgan Page Remix)" Buy it here.

Photo: ronysphotobooth

Just think of the Ruby Suns’ sound — an arrestingly wide-ranging palette of psych-pop, island flavors, Asian exotica and traditional African music — as influenced mostly by frontman Ryan McPhun’s dual citizenship.

McPhun, 25, was reared in Ventura, the son of a Kiwi father and an American mother, a fan of bands such as the Beatles, Sloan, Jason Falkner, obsessive about the Beach Boys and Nirvana, “and a little bit too shy for a lot of the emo and hard-core stuff” that was popular with his friends, he says.

Off McPhun went to New Zealand, where after a short stint at university, he traveled the world and settled in Auckland. He fell in with pop artists on Kiwi indie label Lil’ Chief and played with the Brunettes and the Tokey Tones while finishing up his own album, a 2005 Beach Boys paean released under the rhyme-alicious name Ryan McPhun & the Ruby Suns.

“Some of the songs I had written before I moved, but I was changing very quickly,” he says. “I started getting into less straightforward stuff ... other music from all over the globe. I became less worried about style and more concerned with rhythms and earth sounds.”

That’s reflected on the Ruby Suns’ sophomore album, “Sea Lion” (a March release in the U.S. on Sub Pop), whose miasma of instrumentation, sweet melodies and sounds found in places like New Zealand’s South Island, southern Africa and Thailand make for meditations that border on hallucinations.

“It’s a very broad album,” McPhun says. "Geographically speaking.”

||| Live: The Ruby Suns perform with Le Loup and Princeton on Saturday at the Echo.

||| Download: "Tane Mahuta"

||| Download, from the Ruby Suns' debut album: "Look Out SOS!"

Photo courtesy of Sub Pop

-- Kevin Bronson

Her name is Katie White. Not Stacey, not Jane, not "her" or any of that other stuff she rap-sings in the wonderfully addictive single "That's Not My Name." White is blond, stylish, and when she's not rockin the mic, she straps on a guitar and fronts the Ting Tings, the critically acclaimed duo straight outta Salford, U.K.

Her dashing drummer, Jules De Martino, supplies backing vocals. Together, the Ting Tings have created a dynamic, fresh sound evoking '80s hooks at the right moments, all of which earned them a rightful place on year-end Top 10 critics' lists all over England in 2007.

Only problem is, unless you live in the U.K., you won't (for now) be able to buy any Ting Tings off iTunes, including "That's Not My Name." (But if you make it after the jump, there might be something special awaiting you.)

Speaking of names, in a recent interview with NME -- which recently praised the duo as being "by far the best pop band the UK has produced in years" -- White explained that the band name comes from an actual person. "I used to work for a girl called Ting Ting. We didn’t really decide to be a band but everybody said they liked us so we decided to pick a name and Ting Ting was it. Then we Googled it and found out that it meant ‘the sound of innovation on an open mind’, so we just thought screw it let’s call us that!"

Buzz Bands: Ryan McPhun’s fun with the Ruby Suns

Just think of the Ruby Suns’ sound — an arrestingly wide-ranging palette of psych-pop, island flavors, Asian exotica and traditional African music — as influenced mostly by frontman Ryan McPhun’s dual citizenship.

McPhun, 25, was reared in Ventura, the son of a Kiwi father and an American mother, a fan of bands such as the Beatles, Sloan, Jason Falkner, obsessive about the Beach Boys and Nirvana, “and a little bit too shy for a lot of the emo and hard-core stuff” that was popular with his friends, he says.

Off McPhun went to New Zealand, where after a short stint at university, he traveled the world and settled in Auckland. He fell in with pop artists on Kiwi indie label Lil’ Chief and played with the Brunettes and the Tokey Tones while finishing up his own album, a 2005 Beach Boys paean released under the rhyme-alicious name Ryan McPhun & the Ruby Suns.

“Some of the songs I had written before I moved, but I was changing very quickly,” he says. “I started getting into less straightforward stuff ... other music from all over the globe. I became less worried about style and more concerned with rhythms and earth sounds.”

That’s reflected on the Ruby Suns’ sophomore album, “Sea Lion” (a March release in the U.S. on Sub Pop), whose miasma of instrumentation, sweet melodies and sounds found in places like New Zealand’s South Island, southern Africa and Thailand make for meditations that border on hallucinations.

“It’s a very broad album,” McPhun says. "Geographically speaking.”

||| Live: The Ruby Suns perform with Le Loup and Princeton on Saturday at the Echo.

||| Download: "Tane Mahuta"

||| Download, from the Ruby Suns' debut album: "Look Out SOS!"

Photo courtesy of Sub Pop

-- Kevin Bronson

Her name is Katie White. Not Stacey, not Jane, not "her" or any of that other stuff she rap-sings in the wonderfully addictive single "That's Not My Name." White is blond, stylish, and when she's not rockin the mic, she straps on a guitar and fronts the Ting Tings, the critically acclaimed duo straight outta Salford, U.K.

Her dashing drummer, Jules De Martino, supplies backing vocals. Together, the Ting Tings have created a dynamic, fresh sound evoking '80s hooks at the right moments, all of which earned them a rightful place on year-end Top 10 critics' lists all over England in 2007.

Only problem is, unless you live in the U.K., you won't (for now) be able to buy any Ting Tings off iTunes, including "That's Not My Name." (But if you make it after the jump, there might be something special awaiting you.)

Speaking of names, in a recent interview with NME -- which recently praised the duo as being "by far the best pop band the UK has produced in years" -- White explained that the band name comes from an actual person. "I used to work for a girl called Ting Ting. We didn’t really decide to be a band but everybody said they liked us so we decided to pick a name and Ting Ting was it. Then we Googled it and found out that it meant ‘the sound of innovation on an open mind’, so we just thought screw it let’s call us that!"

The next big Tings

Her name is Katie White. Not Stacey, not Jane, not "her" or any of that other stuff she rap-sings in the wonderfully addictive single "That's Not My Name." White is blond, stylish, and when she's not rockin the mic, she straps on a guitar and fronts the Ting Tings, the critically acclaimed duo straight outta Salford, U.K.

Her dashing drummer, Jules De Martino, supplies backing vocals. Together, the Ting Tings have created a dynamic, fresh sound evoking '80s hooks at the right moments, all of which earned them a rightful place on year-end Top 10 critics' lists all over England in 2007.

Only problem is, unless you live in the U.K., you won't (for now) be able to buy any Ting Tings off iTunes, including "That's Not My Name." (But if you make it after the jump, there might be something special awaiting you.)

Speaking of names, in a recent interview with NME -- which recently praised the duo as being "by far the best pop band the UK has produced in years" -- White explained that the band name comes from an actual person. "I used to work for a girl called Ting Ting. We didn’t really decide to be a band but everybody said they liked us so we decided to pick a name and Ting Ting was it. Then we Googled it and found out that it meant ‘the sound of innovation on an open mind’, so we just thought screw it let’s call us that!"