Cloudspeakers

Hot Chip have always been one of the best balancing acts around. Twin vocalists, not literally, Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard compare and contrast with scissor-sharp clarity-one's butter, one's bre... Read more

John MacLean is no stranger to irony. The sort of future-perfect disco he does so well has the best relationship with it of all the misshapen late-decade trends. Late in the year The Juan MacLean, ... Read more

Dark advertising is a noted casualty of the recession. Today I saw another spot dipped in feelgood sauce and lamented the loss of bleak humor between channels. It happens when times get rough; clie... Read more

Paul Banks and Julian Casablancas both have solo records. It's like 2004 was 20 years ago and we're all very old. Banks hid beneath a pseudonym; Casablancas kept the audacity of his actual name. Wh... Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon's film critic, wrote that Juno's slangy dialogue was so hip it was instantly passé. You could apply the same to the halcyon days of indie-dance and bloghouse, when scummy ... Read more

All you need to know about the xx is inside the single "Basic Space." A shuddering beat like a boat against a dock, a high-pitched guitar, a bass that glides from shadow to shadow, and atmosphere m... Read more

Hip-hop may be having a pre-life crisis. Consult the Urban Dictionary if you need to, but the art form isn't really near the middle of its life. The supermouths are still big and the avant-garde st... Read more

Chris and Dexy Valentine became a band long-distance. Somehow apocrypha already exists on how they met (what a fascinating modern age we live in). But there was a documented strange and varied snai... Read more

When last we caught up with Patrick Wolf, dear readers, he was extolling the peripatetic virtue of the cocaine margarita and molesting the house photographer's beet-red neck with his, Patrick's, pu... Read more

With new albums from Tiga, Peaches, and Fischerspooner, it's a nice year for electroclash nostalgia. But it wouldn't be a resurgence without the circuit's high priestess, Miss Kittin, who rejoins h... Read more