World’s Greatest Ghosts aren’t the type of nerds you think they are.
For a band that’s frequently associated with all things geeky, Jesse and Emily Laney’s North Portland house hardly resembles an ode to Dungeons Dragons. Despite the odd thrift store gnome or tchotchke—and the Darth Vader helmet resting on a keyboard in the front [...]

Loch Lomond Night Bats
(Hush)

[FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION] If local chamber-folk outfit Loch Lomond can be accused of anything, it’s being too nice. The band’s songs, which take singer Ritchie Young’s quivering voice—one that often switches from a deep register to an androgynous falsetto in the same verse—and surround it with layers of baroque instrumentation, have [...]

1. Owl City, “Fireflies”
Holy shit, everything about this rips off the Postal Service. But it’s really, really awful. Is there a lawsuit Ben Gibbard can file? Do we blame him for this shit?
2. Jason DeRulo, “Whatcha Say”
OK, this is pretty catchy, I guess. The Auto-Tune still makes me puke a little, but that T.I.-style beat [...]

Formed: 1995 in Birmingham, England.
Members: Currently, just two: vocalist Trish Keenan and bassist-programmer James Cargill.
Latest release: Broadcast the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age, a collection of what Keenan calls “seancing songs and witch cult rumbles.”
Why you care: Nobody—and I’m looking at you, Stereolab—does spacey, soot-covered electronic pop quite like Broadcast. [...]

The fire-and-brimstone gospel according to St. Frankie Lee.

[AMERICAN GOTHIC] Derrick Martin and Chelsea Campbell live a classic Portlandian fairy tale. A pretty, small-town girl leaves Washington to become a big-city barista. She meets a music nerd with a caffeine habit. A few years later, the 25-year-old proposes to her man and they walk toward the [...]