Electronic music generally feels more machine-like than the product of conventional guitars-and-drums setups, but that doesn't mean every electronic artist is inclined to create work that's cold or inhuman. Dan Snaith exemplifies this idea in Caribou.   

Based on sound alone, The Donkeys come off as pretty mature. The San Diego band plays a tender, starlit kind of Rock with a folky side that isn’t too sleepy, an AltCountry side that isn’t too twangy, a Blues side that isn’t too reverb-heavy and a Psych Rock side that isn’t too psychedelic.   

Talking about race is always a dodgy premise, but Carolina Chocolate Drops and their music practically encourage such discussions. “It's a very strong statement to say that you're a black string band musician,” said Drops' Dom Flemons in an interview with Fairfield Weekly. “That helps people open up the article or what-not and then they get to find out a whole part of the Folk music history that they might not have known before.”


  

Flora and fauna have long been Jonathan Meiburg's most beloved fixations. The leader of the Austin-based Shearwater has populated his work with natural imagery of all kinds — especially birds. The band name (which comes from a species of seabird) and the 2004 and 2008 albums Winged Life and Rook are also tributes. February's Animal Joy continues the course on the imagery front, but the music cracks surprising new ground.  

 Title Fight was started by Ben and Ned Russin back when they were 12 or 13, and the brothers began collaborating and even touring with Shane Moran and Jamie Rhoden soon thereafter. Despite its early start, the group's discography consisted of seven-inches, EPs and other odds and ends until May 2011 when well-connected Punk label SideOneDummy Records released Title Fight’s debut record, Shed.  

 For this band who self-identifies as “Coincidence Pop” (the frontman once explained his music as “really just a combination of fuck-ups that coincidentally sounds pleasant”), things are coming together.   

Hanni El Khatib’s world is a dangerous place. The San Francisco-raised Los Angeles resident prefers to fill his musical terrain with outlaw characters and disastrous circumstances. At least three of Khatib’s releases, including last September’s full-length debut Will the Guns Come Out, have covers adorned with the mangled remnants of car wrecks.  

Oliver Ackermann has a Cincinnati story he enjoys sharing: Back when his band, A Place To Bury Strangers, played the Contemporary Arts Center during the 2010 MidPoint Music Festival, Ackermann’s Shoegaze/Noise Rock band wreaked chaos on the Sixth Street space’s electrical system.    

Hold onto your seats, Cloud Nothings fans, as we're about to exclusively break a new and crucial piece of info about the Cleveland band's second record. While discussing the development of Attack on Memory, Nothings leader Dylan Baldi reveals a curious detail: “Steve Albini bought us kazoos that we used on the second song.” Take a second to visualize a misanthropic musician/producer best known (as an artist) for writing a record called Songs About Fucking exchanging American currency for kazoos.  

Eight years ago, Interscope Records released a compilation called Freshly Squeezed: The Best New Music of 2004 with issues of Spin magazine. It was a fairly good comp, but one track in particular stuck out — Carina Round's virile, ominous “Into My Blood,” a slow-burning masterpiece full of fantastically apocalyptic and occultist imagery filtered through the perspective of one woman. The song sounded like an introduction to a would-be superstar.