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Jonatha Brooke.....Laura Cantrell.....Carbon/Silicon.....Neko Case.....Cocteau Twins.....Devin Davis.....Dead Heart Bloom.....Death Cab For Cutie.....
the Decemberists.....Tanya Donelly.....the Dresden Dolls.....Kathleen Edwards.....For Stars.....Francis and the Lights.....Annie Gallup.....
Barry Thomas Goldberg.....Goldrush.....Guided By Voices.....Annie Hayden.....Boo Hewerdine.....Kristin Hersh.....
the Innocence Mission.....
Iron & Wine.....Lovers.....Marah.....Matt Pond PA.....Maybe Baby.....Midlake.....Anais Mitchell.....Juana Molina.....Jennifer O'Connor.....
the Octopus Project.....Okkervil River.....Over the Rhine.....Sam Phillips.....Pinback.....R.E.M......Amy Ray.....Rilo Kiley.....Tom Robinson.....
the Sheds.....the Shins.....Sigur Rós.....Jill Sobule.....the Spectacular Fantastic.....Spoon.....Sufjan Stevens.....Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros
.....John Vanderslice.....Laura Veirs.....Tom Waits.....Paul Westerberg.....Wilco.....the Wrens.....Yo La Tengo......Warren Zevon.....
last updated 20 Apr 09
A
The Arcade Fire
While Merge Records doesn't go out of its way to make these easy to find, there are in fact three Arcade Fire songs available as free and legal MP3s on the Merge site, all from the band's brilliant debut CD, Funeral. Here are the direct links: "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)," "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)," and "Wake Up." If you have still somehow not managed to check this band out--perhaps you have a highly developed (and usually warranted) suspicion of internet hype--please do yourself a favor and give a listen. This CD is the real thing, this band has incredible potential, and these songs are a very worthy addition to your iPod. Additionally, there is one MP3 available from their second CD, Neon Bible, "Black Mirror"--another good one.
The Arrogants
The Arrogants are a five-piece band from Orange County, California with a fresh take on a classic sound (think Blondie meets the Sundays) and lots of MP3s to grab your ears. While it's hard not to be entranced by vocalist Jana Heller's pop-perfect voice, what makes me stick around is the sturdiness of the playing and songwriting supporting her. If this type of glistening, hard-rocking pop music were as effortless to make as it sounds, there would be a lot more of it around. Fortunately, the band is way generous with its free and legal offerings: the MP3 page has 25 songs available in all--nine from the band's just-released full-length (23 tracks!) CD, You've Always Known When Best to Say Goodbye..., and all 17 songs from their first two EPs. You will also find the six songs from their full-length at Letterbox Records, the band's British label (click the "downloads" tab on the artist page).
Asobi Seksu
If only for the 2004 noise-pop gem "I'm Happy But You Don't Like Me," this NYC quartet is worth knowing about; happily, all six MP3s available on the band's site are quite good--two from their second CD, Citrus, and four from their self-titled debut. I'll admit I fall hard for Asobi Seksu's basic approach, which they sum up quite aptly on their first CD: "The band melds lush yet wonderfully crushing waves of white noise in variation with synth-driven pop melodies and tight lounge progressions." What's not to love? A bonus on the site is an MP3 of the band covering Ramones' holiday nugget "Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)." Also, a non-CD track called "Stay Awake" has found its way online, available as a free and legal MP3 via the Adult Swim web site, of all places. New in 2009, via Insound, is the song "Me and Mary," from the band's third CD, Hush. Note that the band is now a duo and somewhat less noisy than previously.
Nicole Atkins
The New Jersey-based Atkins has a big voice, a healthy respect for music history, and a heady command of the craft of songwriting. I'm pretty sure she's going places beyond the "This Week's Finds" page (where she has, so far, been featured here and here). Between her first and second TWF appearances she was signed to a major label (Sony's Red Ink imprint); even so, I'm happy to report that her music still sounds great, and (even more unusually) free and legal MP3s remain online so you can hear for yourself. The only problem is the four MP3s she has available are not all in one place. Check out "Skywriters," (TWF feature #1) here, via The Deli; "Party's Over" is available via Sony, here; and "Bleeding Diamonds" via the 2007 SXSW site, here (thanks to Frank at Chromewaves for gathering these together and reminding me I wanted to do this entry). Most recently, "Maybe Tonight" is available via the 2008 SXSW repository. "Carouselle," the second song of hers featured on TWF, appears no longer to be available as a free and legal download.
B
Eszter Balint
A Hungarian-born actress/violinist/singer/songwriter, Balint has truly romantic alternative credentials--she grew up acting in her parents' avant garde theater troupe in Europe, relocated to New York in time to hang out with those "No Wave" characters in the late '70s and early '80s, and made a memorable screen debut in Jim Jarmisch's Stranger Than Paradise in 1984. This all by the age of 15. In the '90s she turned increasingly to music. Her debut CD, Flicker, came out in 1999; a long-awaited follow-up, Mud, was released in 2004. There's something of Patti Smith channeled through Lucinda Williams at work here, but with the languid, de-constructed air of latter-day Tom Waits thrown into the mix. Six MP3s are available here--two from Mud, three from her previous one, and a final song labeled "A Very Old Demo." Note that the web site does not appear to be active these days; the last signs of life were around the time of Mud.
Beat Radio
For a self-proclaimed "lo-fi" act, Beat Radio displays an unusually careful eye for craft, along with true--rather than manufactured--heart and spirit. A friendly and sensitive soul with an expressive, slightly damaged tenor, front man and songwriter Brian Sendrowitz deems Beat Radio a collective rather than a band, and guides the enterprise with authenticity, charm, fuzzy indie-pop electronics. The web site offers a nice variety of MP3s here, including six tracks from the band's studio releases (don't miss the TWF featured pick, "Fearful"), five four-track demos, three cover songs, and three songs from Sendrowitz's solo work. There is also a separate page of MP3s for the 2008 EP Sunday Matinee.
Björk
The magically unusual Icelandic singer/songwriter has a web site positively overflowing with stuff of one sort or another. So overflowing that it's easy to overlook that there are in fact a few free and legal MP3s available here. They're buried in a section called Vespertine Special; when you get there, scroll down to a section that says "hafandi eryao i vasanum" (which, apparently, means "having the ear in the pocket"). There you'll see four songs available for downloading, the most substantial, to my ears, being "Verandi." If you're at all video-oriented, you'll find a whole lot more to sink your teeth into on
Björk's site--over a dozen of her, shall we say, idiosyncratic videos are available for viewing. And then you could get lost for a very long time in the vast, cross-referenced repository of sheer information: interviews, commentaries, explanations, history, you name it. This is one of the most comprehensive (if over-busy) musician sites I've seen on the web.
Carla Bozulich
Carla Bozulich is an almost scarily unrestrained singer, her depth-laced voice alternating between a duskier version of Tanya Donelly and full-throttled Patti Smith-ish-ness. Bozulich made her biggest impact on the alternative scene as leader of the critically-acclaimed punk-country-folk (or whatever!) band, The Geraldine Fibbers; since the band's dissolution in the late '90s, Bozulich has intermittently recorded with former Fibber Nels Cline (now a member of Wilco), while involving herself with a variety of experimental art projects in Los Angeles. Her web site has grown increasingly generous over the years; there are now more than 40 MP3s available, including tracks from the Geraldine Fibbers, her pre-Fibbers band Ethyl Meatplow, and her more recent solo work.
Bright Eyes
I am not sure I am climbing onto the Bright Eyes bandwagon (yet), but clearly quivery-voiced Conor Oberst is a talent to be noted, and listened to, at least to see what you think. There are 12 MP3s available on the Saddle Creek Records site (along with one free iTunes download); click "Downloads" once you're there to access them. Note that these are all "AM radio"-like quality, which to me is slightly but not very bothersome. I'd rather have access to lower-quality full-length MP3s than higher-quality clips. That said, there are higher-quality versions of 14 of his songs available via CNET's music.download.com. The latest MP3 from Oberst comes from his first official solo album--i.e. he's finally performing as Conor Oberst; the song is "Danny Callahan," the album, released in August '08 on Merge Records, is self-titled.
Jonatha Brooke
One of the most distinctive and talented singer/songwriters of
her generation, Jonatha Brooke has long had one of the most musically generous web sites on the internet. Things have been cut back over the years--she used to feature full-length streams of pretty much every song she's recorded; what you'll hear now are clips. (Go to the Music page, click on an album, click on "Play Album Clips," and a media player will pop up to let you do so.) If you, on the other hand, click on the word "more" underneath each song title on each album page, you'll get Brooke's personal notes about each song, which can be really interesting. As for free and legal MP3s, she's got two available at this point--a remix of "How Deep is Your Love?," from the Steady Pull CD (2001), and a song from her 2008 CD Works, which features mostly Woody Guthrie lyrics for which Brooke has composed music; it's a good song, with a grammatically troubling title: "There's More True Lovers Than One."
C
Laura Cantrell
Cantrell is a Nashville-born, New York-based musician and radio host (her weekly "Radio Thrift Shop" program can be heard on WFMU) who recorded two highly-acclaimed CDs before quitting her day job at a Manhattan-based financial firm to do music full-time. These sturdy, tradition-minded recordings of hers have attracted a number of notable music-industry fans over the last five years, including Elvis Costello (who picked her to open for him on a number of his 2002 concerts) and the late John Peel, who in 2001 called her first CD "my favourite record of the last ten years and possibly my life." Cantrell offers a generous, annotated assortment of 19 MP3s on her clean, nicely designed web site--including a "This Week's Finds" pick, "14th Street."
Carbon/Silicon
I am thrilled to hear Mick Jones singing again after all these years. The former co-leader of the Clash has, in fact, been in Carbon/Silicon with Tony James (ex- of Generation X and Sigue Sigue Sputnik) since 2003, but their profile has been low on this side of the pond until the last couple of months. Jones and James have offered every track they've recorded as a free and legal download at one point; currently they're keeping available MP3s down to around a half dozen at any given time, which gives you motivation to check in semi-regularly. And apparently Jones and James were inspired to start a band specifically by the reality of peer-to-peer file sharing; as lyrics in the song "M. P. Free" have it: "A billion downloads can it be wrong/A billion people heard my song/So, Goodbye Mr Copyright/The fame will keep me up all night." Also this, from the web site: "The Digital Genie is SO out of the bottle now and I believe it came to save Rock and Roll not destroy it."
Neko Case
Silver-voiced, mysterious, and solid as a rock, Neko Case has a voice for the ages, and a potentially ruinous personal history that manages to reaffirm one's faith in human nature: if someone went through all that ("My parents very much wanted me to become a crack-whore, but I gravely disappointed them by graduating from college," she writes, off-handedly, on her personable web site) and turned out so together, well, there's hope for all of us, yes? Reward yourself by checking out her free and legals--there are four MP3s available via music.download.com, two from the brilliant 2006 CD Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, and two from her live 2004 CD The Tigers Have Spoken. Then reward her by buying a CD or two. New in 2009: the songs "People Gotta Lot of Nerve" and "Middle Cyclone," from the CD Middle Cyclone, released in March.
Cocteau Twins
Pioneering purveyors of a dreamy type of arty synthesizer pop sometimes known simply as "dream pop," Scotland's Cocteau Twins have a web site that lives on even as the band itself is gone. In addition to offering an exhaustive history of the band (which quietly went their separate ways in 1996), the web site features a generous storehouse of MP3s--25 in all, plus two commercial jingles. The songs are a mixture of b-sides, rarities, remixes, and live recordings, but it's really quite a marvelous assortment of freebies that is well worth poking around if you're a fan or if you have any interest in one of the U.K.'s most popular and influential bands of the '80s and '90s.
D
Devin Davis
One of the more talented of the so-called "bedroom rockers" to emerge early in the 21st century, Chicago's Devin Davis opens his mouth and Ray Davies all but tumbles out. This is a fine thing in and of itself, as I am kindly disposed to anyone properly inspired by the Kinks. But Davis has much more going for him than a Kinks fixation, a fact made clearest by his achievement as a singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/arranger/engineer/producer. What distinguishes Davis are the strength of his songs and the looseness he somehow manages to inject into his sound. Three MP3s from his fine debut, Lonely People of the World, Unite!, are available on his web site (along with three MP3s of live performances dating from NYC in November 2004). Another MP3 from the album is hosted over on SXSW.
Dead Heart Bloom
NYC-based multi-instrumentalist Boris Skalsky has been doing business as Dead Heart Bloom since 2005, initially more or less by himself, more recently with a small contingent of musical associates. Not shy of wearing his '70s influences on his sleeve--Bowie and Lennon are big in DHB-land--Skalsky has been steadily carving out his own sound on the net-based music scene; his music seems to be gaining physical force as the years go by. Skalsky has been at the forefront of the movement to release music for free online, while still selling hard copies. Everything Dead Heart Bloom has released is available here as free and legal MP3s: two full-length albums and three EPs to date. New in 2009: a Boris Skalsky solo album. Not sure if it will be released in full as a free and legal download, but here is one song to grab if you're interested.
Death Cab for Cutie
"Death Cab for Cutie" was a song on the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band's debut album (circa 1967); as a band name it implies a harsh, nihilistic sound that is rather the opposite of the sound the band has. Maybe that's part of the joke. In any case, as it turns out, front man Ben Gibbard has an aching, delightful pop voice,
recalling the likes of Erasure's Vince Clarke, and now spawning a whole new series of sound-alike bands, with similarly precise, carefully articulated sorts of songs sung by a sweet-voiced front man. There are seven Death Cab
for Cutie MP3s posted on the Barsuk Records web site, including a song from the band's 2005 album Plans, which was actually released on Atlantic Records (but Barsuk released a vinyl version of it). There are another six MP3s available at Epitonic (a defunct but not completely dead yet music site), plus one repeat from Barsuk's selection. The band had something of an indie/cultural moment in 2004 thanks in large part to their emergence as the definitive O.C. band of the day; seems like ancient history already in this sped-up decade of ours. While never as brilliant, to my ears, as the hype implied, they're definitely worth a listen.
The Decemberists
A Fingertips favorite from the starting gate back in '03, the Decemberists play a poignant, idiosyncratic style of rock'n'roll--acoustic-based, with a knowing sense of instrumentation, an unerring ear for melody, and a predilection for 19th-century words and settings. More power to them that they've gained a wider audience over these last few years--their most recent CD, The Crane Wife (2006), was released on Capitol Records. Between their current major-label status and the fact that their previous record label, Kill Rock Stars, has redesigned its web site and greatly reduced their available MP3s, there are not nearly the number of Decemberists songs available as free and legal MP3s as there were a couple of years ago. There remain three MP3s on the Kill Rock Stars site (scroll down, look in left column; bands are listed alphabetically), and three on music.download.com; two are the same on each site, so there are really just four different songs in all. Better than nothing!
Tanya Donelly
The continually alluring and puzzling vocalist who once led the group Belly has placed a worthwhile trove of demo recordings up on her web site--10 demos from Belly's Star CD. Additionally, Donelly has posted 10 MP3s that were recorded at the same time as her recent This Hungry Life CD, an album that was recorded live in front of an audience in a Vermont club. There's no active link on her site anymore for these live recordings, but they remain online and available, at least for now.
The Dresden Dolls
The White Stripes have their guitar-and-drum, Led Zeppelin meets a couple of geeks from Detroit act; meanwhile over in Boston we have the Dresden Dolls with their piano-and-drum, Kurt Weill meets a couple of punks act. It's hard to know what kind of shelf life this sort of duo will have, but the music ("Brechtian Punk Cabaret," as they label it themselves) certainly stands out in a crowd. And there are hints at a simmering sort of brilliance beneath what might at first glance seem like shtick: the music exudes a sneaky sort of chaotic sophistication, and Amanda Palmer's succulently husky voice rivets the ear. There are five MP3s available on the band's site--four from their self-titled debut CD, which was released in April 2004, and one from their long-awaited follow-up, Yes, Virginia, which came out in April 2006. The band also intermittently posts live tracks to download; they're up to more than 30 in all, available on the same page. Occasionally they do covers, which are particularly interesting; they include "Karma Police," "The Ghost in You,' and "Life on Mars."
E
Kathleen Edwards updated
This wonderful and gifted Canadian singer/songwriter has 10 MP3s available on her site, five from each of her two CDs. Go to the home page, click "Music" (left-hand column), and enjoy--this is exceptional stuff. Start with "Six O'Clock News" and "In State" to get a sense of her electric, Neil Youngian side, but don't miss "Lone Wolf" to hear her quieter side, and "Westby" to catch her somewhat naughty sense of humor. In 2008, she released her third strong album, Asking for Flowers; the title track can be heard as a free and legal MP3, here.
F
For
Stars
Nick Drake meets Radiohead (or, at
least, Coldplay): this defunct S.F.-based quintet had an appealing melancholy and intensity about them. Their 2004 CD--It Falls Apart--was prophetically named, as the band disappeared not too long after that. They're still worth checking out, however, which you can do via Epitonic, which still hosts seven MP3s of theirs, including the lovely "Field of Fire," a former Fingertips Top 10 selection. Another former Top 10 selection, "It Doesn't Really Matter," can be found at Insound, along with two more MP3s, here.
Francis and the Lights
Purveyors of minimalist, postmodern funk, Brooklyn's Francis and the Lights stand out in an indie crowd for their Prince- and Gaye-inflected 21st-century rock'n'roll. Front man Francis Starlite has a heck of a versatile voice--agreeably husky in the lower register, and lithe falsetto way up high. Four MP3s are available on the band's home page, two from each of their first two EPs; on a separate page, however, you can also listen to and download all six songs from the first EP, Striking, which came out in 2007. Two of the band's newest songs are available as of year-end 2008 via direct links; they are two sides of a single--one song is called "Lime," the other is "Wyn." Additionally, you can download a cover of the Kanye West song "Can't Tell Me Nothing" here; this song was recorded as part of the Guilt By Association Vol. 2 compilation.
G
Annie Gallup
Here we have a great example of what
you can find on the web that you can't find on the radio and it's so
good. Annie Gallup is a beat-inflected singer/songwriter/poet who has managed
not to get the attention she richly deserves. Her web site is focused on her lyrics (which themselves are quite worthwhile), but one MP3 is available via the record label Fifty Fifty Music, and it's a keeper:
"Money,"
the incredible lead track from her 2001 CD, Swerve. Gallup flies so far under the radar screen that it's hard to discover when her releases hit the street, even after the fact. She did a collaborative EP in (I think) late 2006 called Ortho Songs, which sounds like a good accompaniment to Michael Moore's movie about the health care system. All five songs are available as MP3s on her site, but note that she only sings on two of them. Her most recent full-length CD, Half Of My Crime, was also released in 2006; no free and legal MP3s are available from it, however. Alas.
Barry Thomas Goldberg
The gruff but lovable Goldberg cuts an unusual 21st-century figure: an old-school Midwestern rock'n'roller who has managed to maintain a youthful sort of defiance and edginess; from the depths of his vivid, cigarette-stained voice comes a sound you just don't hear from 20-something indie rockers. Scroll through the site's willfully unpolished layout (don't forget to go to page two and three as well) and you'll eventually come across a dozen or so full-length MP3s. Honestly, it's hard to tell, they're spread out willy-nilly down the page, in and around lots of text and graphics and links to YouTube videos. Included among them are two former TWF picks, "American Grotesque" and "Remember New Orleans". The latest upload, "Break Away," from his 2007 CD Mapleton Memoir, sounds like another worthy song. Thanks to visitor Paul for cluing me in to Goldberg in the first place, and keeping me posted on his comings and goings.
Goldrush
Five lads from Oxford, England who do not sound like Radiohead, Goldrush has been busy the last few years perfecting a British take on Americana music, with nods towards everyone from the Byrds to Neil Young to Wilco. In the process (as these things go with the right amount of talent), the band has developed a sound that seems pretty much their own (not to mention a record company in the U.K. that is their own). There are five MP3s available on the Better Looking Records web site--three from the band's debut U.S. CD, Ozona, and two from their excellent follow-up CD, 2007's The Heart is the Place. An additional MP3 from the second CD can be found among the downloads available for the 2007 SXSW festival.
Guided By Voices
Dayton, Ohio's claim to indie rock fame, Guided
By Voices, masterminded by the prolific Robert Pollard, chugged along for more than 15 years before calling it quits at the end of 2004. During their years as a band they released something like 179 albums. (Well, okay, not quite that many, but they sure have been prolific, to the
point of being hard to keep up with if not a devoted fan.) A good place to go for an introduction is betterPropaganda's GbV page, which features six good free and legal downloads, including two former TWF picks ("My Kind of Soldier" and "Gonna Never Have to Die"). For the more adventurous, check out the dozen or so MP3s (some non-album material) on the
band's
web site (click on the words "GBV MultiMedia," then on "MP3" under the "Sounds" heading). The MP3s here are listed as "clips" but are actually songs; be aware that mixed in and around studio recordings are some 30 MP3s of live performances, which make up for in charm (sometimes) what they lack in sound quality. And then, too, Pollard has a whole batch of MP3s from his solo recordings, themselves mushrooming rapidly, on his own web site, here. There are a lot of demos but also a good number of album tracks, including one TWF pick, "Death of the Party," from his "Keene Brothers" project.
H
Annie Hayden
Gifted with one of
those refreshingly pure, heart-opening voices (like, maybe, Angie Hart from
Frente, or Mary Lou Lord), Annie Hayden spent the mid'-90s in the Jersey-based indie-pop band Spent, attracting a small but loyal following in the process. She then became a solo performer, released one CD (Rub, on Merge Records, in 2000), and kind of sort of disappeared. At long last a second CD, The Enemy of Love, was released on Merge in September 2005. One MP3 from the newer CD is available here; two MP3s from her first CD are available via Epitonic.
Kristin Hersh
"Money has so polluted the music world that my overwhelming urge right now is to divorce money from recorded music," writes Kristin Hersh on her web site, dated 15 December 2005. And so saying, she and her current band 50 Foot Wave released a new EP entitled Free Music that is exactly that: music available for free, legally, online. You'll find the five-song EP in its entirely here, along with three of Hersh's solo songs (from her Grotto CD), three songs from Throwing Muses' self-titled "comeback" CD from 2003, and one song identified merely as being from something called "kdd." Regardless of what you think of her music--I'll admit I find some of it too churny-muscley for my taste--Hersh is without question a musician of talent and principle. "We thought it'd be interesting to ask for your energy and enthusiasm rather than your money and see what happens," she writes, of the experiment in free music. More recently, Hersh helped launch an effort called the Coalition of Artists & Stake Holders (CASH), which is actively trying to figure out some sort of new model for music in our digital age. Via CASH, Hersh offers an expanding selection of songs to download (currently about a dozen), in a variety of download formats (not just MP3); you can have them for free but she does request a donation if you are so inclined.
Boo Hewerdine
A songwriter,
guitarist, and producer who's worked behind the scenes more often than as a
performer, Hewerdine is an accomplished musician with the occasional knack for
creating truly memorable moments both as a writer and performer. His output is
uneven, but he's worth knowing about. Note: even though the
web site looks very low-tech, Hewerdine offers a lot--roughly 20 MP3s to download,
from both his solo albums as well as his work with the British group The Bible,
and albums he did as collaborations with others. The MP3s are grouped by project; you'll have to click album by album to see what's there. While the MP3s from this various albums are so-called "AM-quality," if you go to the "Rare & Exclusive" section, there are 14 MP3s that are either 128kbps or 320kbps.
I
The Innocence Mission
The Lancaster, PA-based folk-pop band has one MP3 up on their record company's web site (there used to be more), and two MP3s available via Insound. Nice, dreamy stuff, reminiscent of the Sundays. Sadly, "Tomorrow on the Runway" (long on the Fingertips "All-Time" Top 10), one of my favorite songs ever, is no longer available (although you can listen to the entire song on last.fm). The band used to host full-length MP3s on its site but no longer does--the "audio" page there now steers you to their MySpace page (or points you towards dead links).
Iron & Wine
South Carolina-raised Sam Beam is more than a whisper and a beard; over time, he's developed into quite a remarkable singer/songwriter, performing as Iron & Wine. And over time, his record label, Sub Pop, has developed a nice little collection of free and legal Iron & Wine MP3s--seven in all, including two highly-placed tunes on the Fingertips Top 10: "Woman King" and "Boy With a Coin." Go here, and scroll to where it says "Downloads." Based for a long time in Florida, Beam is now based in Austin. New in 2009 are the songs "The Trapeze Swinger" and "Belated Promise Ring," from Around the Well, a compilation of out-of-print and never-before-released material.
JK
L
M
Marah
The MP3s that are available from this
well-regarded, Philadelphia-born, Bruce Springsteen-influenced band are kind of hidden from view on the band's web site. Seven of the CD titles listed on the band's discography page are clickable, and will each take you to a page with one MP3 available from that album. Their most recent CD, 2008's Angels of Destruction, is clickable, but only has a stream, not an MP3 available; have no fear, however--an MP3 from that one is available here, via Stereogum.
Matt
Pond PA
An attractive indie outfit with a knack for melody and song structure,
Matt Pond PA was one of the early stars of the music internet, but has scaled back its offerings over the years as the band became more widely known. No longer will you find MP3s on their web site, alas; and alas even more: the web site itself has been designed into oblivion, being oddly difficult to navigate when last I checked. But, the good news: you still can find five of their fine songs at Insound, (including two former TWF picks, "Fairlee" and "Grave's Disease").
Maybe
Baby
Jennifer Kimball and Jonatha Brooke, together known as The Story, parted ways in
1994. Brooke continued onward with Story-like music (she had in fact written and
sang most of the Story's last album), but Kimball more or less disappeared after
that. There was a solo CD in 1998 on a small label but otherwise she spent the
better part of the '90s singing on other people's records. Kimball resurfaced in 2003 with a band, the Boston-based Maybe Baby. She sings both lead and back-up vocals, a
combination that seems to suit her. Check out four MP3s on the group's web site. The band is not very active; neither is the web site. But the songs are worth checking out, particularly "All The Time in the World." Kimball's web site is the more active place these days to check in on her. She released a solo CD in early 2006, but no free and legal MP3s to be found. Kimball does feature a so-called radio on her site (click on the word "listen") that streams three dozen or so full-length songs from her various projects.
Midlake
A quintet of former North Texas School of Music students have banded together to create a wonderfully assured sound that has changed notably from CD to CD. The band's web site no longer features the downloads they used to offer, unfortunately. But you can still grab the brilliant, Procol Harum-ish "Balloon Maker" off the SXSW web site here. That one's from their charming 2004 CD, Bamnan and Slivercork. The band's second CD, The Trials of Van Occupanther (2006), releases prog-rock influences to mine a flowing, Fleetwood Macky sound. This album has yielded one straightforward free and legal MP3--the wonderful "Roscoe" (a TWF pick) and then two remixes of the song "Young Bride"; you can find them all here.
Anais Mitchell
With a fiery, colorful voice that's one part Iris DeMent, one part Shawn Colvin, one part intelligent young American contemporary folk singer trying to figure life out, Anais Mitchell offers two MP3s on her web site, both from her 2004 CD, Hymns for the Exiled. There is also an MP3 from her 2007 release, The Brightness, available via Toolshed, a music promotion company with a knack for offering worthy free and legal MP3s from their clients; the song is called "Fonder Heart" and here is a direct link. I am not inherently drawn to earnest, folk-imbued singer/songwriters, but I think Mitchell shows a lot of what Charles Ives liked to call "substance" within the mere "manner" of her chosen genre. She is often political but smart enough not to write simplistically or didactically. Thanks to visitor Eric for introducing me to her.
Juana Molina
A beguiling singer/songwriter from Argentina, Molina is probably not for everyone--her
voice is a bit breathy, and her songs develop slowly, favoring entrancing
repetition over a traditional sense of verse and chorus; there's something of
Astrud Gilberto meets trip-hop about her. Me, I find it fun, rewarding, and
different. She's got eight songs available as free and legal downloads on her site, but you have to download them as .zip files, then extract them. Start here and click the word "downloads"; I suggest trying the song "Micael" from her 2006 CD Son and the title track to her CD Tres Cosas and advancing from there. More recently, the title track to her 2008 CD Un Día, is available via Stereogum; go here and click on the track to download. In addition--and I'm not sure if this will be up permanently or not--a San Francisco Chronicle profile of Molina in Feb. '09 featured six free and legal downloads with the article: "Un Día," plus two others from that album and two from previous albums, none of which I've seen anywhere else. (But boo to the Chronicle: "Un Día" is flagrantly misidentified as "Una Dia," revealing a poor knowledge of both Spanish and HTML.) Oh, and if you're into her sound, I strongly suggest watching this cool video about her that's up on YouTube also.
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Jennifer O'Connor
Many people, I think, believe that with singer/songwriters, it begins with the song. Me, I think there's a reason we don't call them songwriter/singers; I think it begins with the voice. When the voice does the right thing--whatever the hell that actually is, and it's never properly describeable--not only do you know it, but you feel it. And once you feel it, you go wherever the songs go. Jennifer O'Connor has one of those voices. Low-pitched and speaking-voice-like, it's not necessarily pretty (though it sort of is), it's not necessarily all that versatile, but it's a voice I feel, and I follow it. Since signing to Matador Records (yay for her!), she's taken down the MP3s that used to live on her web site (alas for us!). But there are now four MP3s on the Matador Records site: two from her 2008 CD, Here With Me, and two from her previous album, Over the Mountains, Across the Valley, and Back to the Stars.
The Octopus Project
So I will admit I'm not normally a fan of rock instrumentals, nor, therefore, of bands that only do instrumentals. But there is something so instantly appealing about the Octopus Project's approach to rock-without-singing, which blends together all sorts of electronic-seeming noises with the squonk and squawk of real electric instruments into songs that ooze warmth, invention, and charm. The record label calls it "ambidextrous equipment failure junk-tronica," which is as good a description as any. Listen for yourself: the band has 14 MP3s available on its web site, including three from its 2006 collaborative album with Black Moth Super Rainbow, The House of Apples and Eyeballs. There is also one MP3 available on the band's page within the 2006 SXSW web site. In addition to one song from the band's latest CD, Hello, Avalanche, that is available on the band's site, three others are available via the band's promo company: "Bees Bein' Strugglin'"; "An Evening With Rthrtha"; and the TWF-featured "Truck."
Okkervil River
This Austin-based quintet has, over the course of the '00s, become one of America's finest and most consistent indie bands. There are seven MP3s available at the Jagjaguwar Records site, including four former TWF picks: "Lost Coastlines,"
"Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe,"
"For Real," and "It Ends With a Fall." On Insound, you'll find three more MP3s (plus four already on the Jagjaguwar site). Additionally, two older MP3s are available via Epitonic. In addition to the TWF picks on the Jagjaguwar site, don't miss "The President's Dead," a strange and compelling dream of an alternate-reality song, and the brisk and excellent "No Key, No Plan."
Over the Rhine
While the wonderful and talented Over the Rhine has, over the last year or so, removed free and legal MP3s from their site (there's an MP3 store, however, where you can buy some great songs at 99 cents a pop), there are still a few hidden treasures available online if you know where to look. The song "Trouble," (a former TWF pick) is here, and two from their classy Christmas offering, entitled Snow Angels, remain available here (including another TWF pick, "All I Ever Get For Christmas Is Blue"). Lastly, the song "Lookin' Forward," from their beautiful, homespun 2006 CD Drunkard's Prayer, can be found via the SXSW site, 2006 festival edition, here.
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Sam Phillips
The incomparable Sam Phillips is one of my all-time favorite artists; you'll find four MP3s on her web site--three from A Boot and a Shoe (2004), including the stunning "Reflecting Light," and one from Fan Dance (2001). (To find the MP3s, scroll horizontally through the music offerings.) Note that a web site redesign associated with the latest CD has spawned a new blog; the only downside is that her old blog has disappeared, on which were a number of gem-like entries. "God knows there is always trouble," she wrote, on June 23, 2006, "but ecstasy is on the prowl. I think it's trying to find us."
Pinback
As often as I've listened to Pinback's free and legal MP3s, I still have a hard time putting my arms around their music, either in terms of describing it or even recalling in my head what they sound like. No matter: whatever this two-man band (bolstered, Steely Dan-ishly, by a rotating cast of instrumentalists album to album) creates seems always to be well-crafted, melodic, and a little bit surprising. Symbolically enough, even their MP3s are hard to pin down, scattered as they are on a variety of sites: there are two on the band's site, one on Insound (this is a direct link to the song "Fortress," featured on "This Week's Finds" in November 2004). An older MP3 (also a direct link) is available on the Absolutely Kosher Records site, while the band's most recent free and legal MP3, from their 2007 CD Autumn of the Seraphs is available via Spinner.
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R.E.M.
However well-known they have become over the years, R.E.M. does of course have its roots in the alternative
world--heck, this is the band that was partially responsible for the very existence of
something called "alternative rock." So leave it to these guys to be one of the few
major-label acts to offer some "free and legals"
even as they may not be able, because of contractual limitations, to put any of their existing album cuts online.
What they have offered are remixes, done by a series of remix specialists--there are 10 in all, based on six original R.E.M. songs. Go here, then click on "more" under "R.E.M.I.X." (R.E.M. fans might also like to check out the "Automatic for the People" tribute CD that is available as a track by track free and legal download via Stereogum; among the bands covering the songs are the Veils, the Wrens, and Rogue Wave.)
Amy Ray
Amy Ray's solo material offers a shot of hard-edged, well-crafted rock'n'roll that her years with the Indigo Girls might not lead a listener to expect. As the head of her own, not-for-profit label (Daemon Records), she both nurtures independent talent (there are some 30 artists on the roster) and releases her own stuff every now and then. You can find six MP3s on her page: four from her first two studio albums, and two from a live CD. (Scroll down to find them, with the track listings.) Additionally, two songs from her most recent CD, 2008's Didn't It Feel Kinder, are available via direct link: "Blame is a Killer" (a TWF pick in July '08) and "Birds of a Feather."
Rilo Kiley
A charming, somewhat eccentric, yet thoroughly accessible band from Los Angeles, Rilo Kiley has four MP3s online in three different places. One song from their first CD, 2001's Take Offs and Landings, is available via Barsuk Records, while two songs from their second album, The Execution of All Things, can be found via Saddle Creek Records (click on "downloads" to get to the songs). Additionally, the great song "It's a Hit" from their most recent CD, More Adventurous, is available here via Insound (this is a direct link). There do not seem to be any free and legal MP3s available from the band's major label debut, Under the Black Light, which was released on Warner Brothers in the summer of 2007. There is, however, a free download available from lead singer Jenny Lewis's 2008 solo CD, Acid Tongue--the title track, here (also a direct link).
Tom Robinson
One-time new wave icon Tom Robinson has been more active as a BBC radio host in recent years than as a recording musician, but his web site offers free and legal MP3s of every song from the four solo recordings of his made between 1984 and 1996--54 songs in all. As explained on his downloads page, Robinson has decided it's better to give this music away than fiddle with the music industry's flawed economic model. Thanks to visitor George for the head's up.
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The Sheds
The number of DIY-ish duos making music in the U.S. has mushroomed with the rise of the internet; but an earnest desire to record and distribute your own music does not, alas, automatically make for a worthwhile listening experience. (Trust me on this one.) The Sheds, however, rise above run-of-the-mill, small-city indie rock duo music from the sheer force of their earnest yet also deeply imaginative songwriting. Hailing from Burlington, Kentucky, a quiet town on the periphery of the Cincinnati metropolitan area, the Sheds also believe in the power of free and legal music: every song on each album of theirs is available as a free and legal MP3 on their web site--more than 50 now, and counting, with the release of their 2007 CD, You've Got a Light. Go here, then click on an album title to find each page of downloadable songs. I suggest starting with their newest material and working backwards.
The Shins
The Shins seem to be another one of those indie bands that got so popular (without actually being really popular) that a certain sort of backlash arose against them in the hipper-than-thou indie world. There was no reason for the lukewarm reviews the band's third CD, Wincing the Night Away, received, except for the fact that some people decided they weren't cool anymore. Phooey to that. This Albuquerque quartet has a wonderful, if inscrutable, way of writing catchy songs and truly are one of the current era's seminal bands. You can find three of the band's songs that have been featured to date "This Week's Finds," plus two others, on the band's page within the large and resource-filled Sub Pop Records web site.
Sigur Rós
This spacy, intense Icelandic band gives you a good opportunity to
check out their haunting (but daunting) music with 12 full-length MP3s available
to download on their web site. And when I say full-length, I mean full-length--it's not
unusual for a Sigur Rós song to run 8 minutes or more. There are a half-dozen live recordings available as full MP3s here as well. And here's a direct link to the song "Gobbledigook," from the band's 2008 CD, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (translated: With Buzzing in Our Ears, We Play Endlessly).
Jill Sobule
Sharp-witted singer/songwriter Sobule has 10 MP3s up on her web site, presented on two different
pages. On a page called "Jill's Show & Tell," you'll find a semi-regularly rotating selection of three or four MP3s, billed as an assortment of "unreleased material, live recordings, thematically-related material, and so on." Kudos to Sobule for actually keeping this page updated, which means it's very much worth checking in on every couple of months. On a page identified simply as "Music" at the top, there are five more MP3s. New in 2009: "A Good Life," from her fan-supported CD, The California Years.
The Spectacular Fantastic
An effortlessly likable neo-power pop band from Cincinnati, the Spectacular Fantastic is the brainchild of singer/songwriter Mike Detmer and includes the talents of Jonathan Williams, who records on his own as Tessitura. Here is one talented band that believes in the power of free and legal music; in fact, their free and legal MP3s are getting hard to keep track of. Working from the present to the past, I'll start with the fact that in February 2008, the band released a double EP, with one free and legal MP3, "Tiny Little Heart," available from the first one, Consume, and the entire second EP, Reward, available freely and legally, here. In
May 2007, the band released the CD Outer Space is Nothing But a Lie as a free and legal download, all 11 songs, here. Scroll down and you'll see the band's second free-to-download EP (called, apparently, The Free 2006 EP), which was released in the summer of 2006. An earlier free-to-download six-song EP of theirs is still available yet further down on the page--this one includes the wonderful song "60 Cycles," a former TWF pick. And yet two more MP3s are available as part of a split single the Spectacular Fantastic released with Tessitura (the Tessitura songs are good too!). So that's another 16 or so MP3s. And wait, there's more: another former TWF pick, "Darkest Hour," is still available but on the discography page, along with five additional older MP3s.
Spoon
An Austin-based trio, Spoon has been honing its sparse, edgy, carefully crafted indie pop sound for a decade.
Such is the frenetic pace of musical trends that in staying together for more than a decade, the
band serves as an effective link from the post-Nirvana music scene of the early '90s to the mid-'00s post-hip-hop indie-rock scene, and they do it by pretty much sounding the same.
Eight MP3s are available via music.download.com, including two TWF picks: "Me and the Bean," from February '04, and "The Underdog," from June '07.
Sufjan Stevens
I'll admit I don't completely hear this guy. Sure, I sense a great amount of talent (and, of course, productivity!); and yet the songs, while intriguing to me, don't connect at the core. Clearly I'm in the minority, however, as Stevens has been widely acclaimed everywhere he goes. I'll keep listening. In the meantime, there are five MP3s to be found on the Asthmatic Kitty web site--scroll down the right side, they're there under "mp3s." An additional five songs can be found at music.download.com.
Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros
The late, great co-founder of the Clash
had found a vital new musical identity at the dawning of the new millennium;
there was great promise of a whole new catalog of music that would emerge with
time as the veteran Strummer explored new sounds with his young bandmates.
Sadly, this is not to be, as Strummer died in December 2002; he was only 50.
You can find five excellent examples of his work with the Mescaleros on music.download.com, here.
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John Vanderslice
When it comes to free and legal MP3s, John Vanderslice is what you might call an early adopter. He was one of the first major talents I uncovered when Fingertips opened for business in 2003 (I hadn't heard of him previously), and even back then he was offering a lot, and figuring that you'd like what you heard enough to buy some of his very worthy albums (I know I have). His
web site remains chock full of goodies--more than 40 MP3s in all, and that doesn't count a whole lot of live recordings and remixes available as MP3s also. The best place to start is on his MP3 Index page, which lists everything. There's
also a link on the site to a page where you can find all songs from each of three CDs by
Vanderslice's old band, MK Ultra; these are also very much worth hearing. To date, Vanderslice has had six songs featured on "This Week's Finds," the most recent being "Fetal Horses," in the spring of '09, from the CD Romanian Names (May 2009). All are still available via his site. Another song from the new CD, "Too Much Time," is also available as a free and legal MP3.
Laura Veirs
There's something crystalline and precise about Laura Veirs' music, even as there's likewise something loose and unrestrained; she strikes me as a singular talent. Although from Colorado, Veirs first developed a more significant following overseas than in the U.S., where her first three CDs were difficult to find to say the least. Her American profile increased markedly in 2004 when Nonesuch released her CD Carbon Glacier. (The only bad thing about that is it led to the elimination of a couple of great MP3s from web, as Nonesuch, an otherwise estimable label, does not believe in full-length free and legal MP3s. And so the web has lost a truly great song, "The Cloud Room," a "This Week's Finds" selection in early April 2004 and a former number one song in the Fingertips Top 10.) On her web site you'll find MP3s from her first three CDs only, five songs in all; go here, then click on the words "listen/buy" from the choices at the top, then scroll down. Not every song listed here is a downloadable MP3--go to the early albums at the bottom to find them. Her second Nonesuch CD, Year of Meteors, came out in August 2005; you can download the fine song "Galaxies" from that CD on her 2006 SXSW page.
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Tom Waits
The brilliance of the mad, rogue genius Waits is impossible to sum up in a few random free and legal MP3s. But a few are better than nothing, so head on over to music.download.com for four excellent songs of his. All are from CDs released in the 1999 to 2004 time frame (including the great "Hold On").
Paul Westerberg
His wild and woolly run with the Replacements decades behind him, Paul Westerberg has been recording as a solo artist for longer now than he fronted that legendary band. While he may never gain quite as much attention for his non-Mats output, he never fails to show flashes of brilliance in every CD he releases. You can check out five of his songs as free and legal MP3s on the Vagrant Records site, including the great former TWF pick, "As Far As I Know."
Wilco
The great Chicago band has done its best over the years to offer free and legal music for its fans online, ranging from entire EPs to random B-sides. While right now the band's web site does not obviously offer anything to download, what they do offer is pretty stunning: you can hear every song of theirs in its entirety, from every album they've recorded to date, from 1995's A.M. through 2007's Sky Blue Sky. The technology is simple and seamless, the sound quality high. Go to the Records page and feast your ears. Then buy something you don't own yet.
The Wrens
The Wrens' status as poster children for the phenomenon of the "critically acclaimed, commercially ignored" indie band has maybe gained more traction--ironically--since the documentary that was in the works about them (highlighting their status, yes, as a critically acclaimed, commercially ignored indie band) has been indefinitely postponed. Seems only fitting somehow. Anyway, the site associated with the documentary is not online at this point, taking with it nine MP3s. The band's site, however, is still very much up and running; there, you'll also find nine MP3s, just two of which had previously been on the documentary site.
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Yo La Tengo
This archetypal indie trio from Hoboken continues to make compelling music with a relentlessly homespun quality. Five MP3s from their studio albums and five live recordings are available here, including two from their memorably-titled 2006 CD I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass--one of which ("Beanbag Chair") was a TWF pick. Meanwhile, over on Last.fm, there is one MP3 from an early--but worthy--CD, 1992's May I Sing With Me. New in 2009: "Periodically Double or Triple," from the band's Popular Songs album, due out in September.
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