So apparently, there is a new movie featuring everyone’s favorite Showtime Pizza animatronic band, making it’s big comeback. I’m totally a sucker for weird stuff like this, so, I’m very excited that they are showing this documentary in a local theatre.

With the closing of Showbiz Pizza Place in the early nineties, and the subsequent removal of the Rock-afire Explosion, a small but determined group of fans persisted with the hopes of reviving their fallen obsession. It wasn’t until 2007, with the resurgence of the Rock-afire Explosion on YouTube with songs like “Miss New Booty,” “Hey There Delilah,” and “Love in This Club,” that the animatronic band found its way back into the public consciousness. Chris Thrash, a car salesman from Phenix City, Alabama who recently purchased a Rock-afire Explosion, has led the charge with his inventive programming and clever song choice. Aaron Fechter, creator of the Rock-afire Explosion and sole employee of Creative Engineering Inc., has worked closely with his fans with the hopes of revitalizing what was once a 300 employee, 20 million dollar per-year industry.

“The Rock-afire Explosion” is the story of a small-town disc jockey, a struggling inventor, and an animatronic rock band, that quickly becomes an eccentric portrait of childhood memories, broken dreams, and the resilience of the human spirit.

Watch them play “Electric Feel” by MGMT!

I know they’re not the most fashionable band, especially in a blog that holds that ‘indie’ word in its title, but even if Coldplay is one of the biggest bands on the planet right now and a lot of you can’t stand even the thought of listening to Chris Martin and co’s material, their latest video for Strawberry Swing (the thousandth-or-so single released from last year’s brilliant Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends or some co-release of it) still deserves a viewing. The soothing, calm and wonderfully tranquil journey of sweet melodies gets an impressively well-made video, all stop motion and detailed chalk drawings on a gigantic blackboard. It’s just wonderful how in the era of CGI some people still like using alternative animation methods that look amazing.

Babelgum has the exclusive for the video so click here to view it.

First of all, apologies dear readers for our slight silence as we’ve all been quite preoccupied this week! To make up for lack of articles and mp3s, all which shall return next week again, here’s a little batch of things I’ve been powerplaying recently whenever I’ve had the chance to powerplay anything. They might not be as fashionable choices as Mag’s mathnoisetechnojanglepaganindierock delights or as immense of a treasurepile as Ipequey’s weekly chest of indie pop diamonds from today and the past, but they sure are gooood.

First of all, we have a little piece of the Finnish quirky pop group Regina. They released their third album Puutarhatrilogia recently and, well, it’s not really my cup of tea. Regina’s debut Katso maisemaa still charms me with its goofy, naïve-ish attitude but after the debut the band’s decided to grow up and take a slightly more mature, and a bit artsier, approach to their music. Which is great! For them anyway. They continue to develop as artists and that’s a good thing, and I can definitely see why people love their more recent albums, but I just kinda miss that fun little novelty charm that got me into buying the debut in the first place.

Anyway! “Saanko jäädä yöksi?” is Puutarhatrilogia’s centerpiece focus and the album’s best track, an artsy little pseudo-dance ditty driven by an irresistable piano melody, chopped vocal clips and Iisa Pajula’s quirky singing, mixed together with a brilliant burst in intensity as the drums finally hit the stage fully and interspersed with a random dancehall interlude. It’s quirky, it’s brilliant.

MP3: Saanko jäädä yöksi?
Puutarhatrilogia on Recordshop X

Kashmir is a Danish rock band who started off as some sort of funk-rocksters, if I’m reading my Wikipedia correctly, and then drifted into a more melancholy, melodic rock act. Zitilites is widely regarded as their best album and whilst it suffers from slight overlength mixed together with a bit too similar tempo all the way through, it’s an enchanting and good listen that’s been keeping me in its grips lately. The lead man Kasper Eistrup sounds like he’s been taking vocal lessons from Thom Yorke which makes the music occasionally sound like a long lost off-shoot album from Radiohead’s OK Computer era, but you know, that’s a good thing.

“Rocket Brothers” was a big hit in Denmark and a fairly audible thing elsewhere in Scandinavia too when it was released, and for a very good reasons: great melodies, excellent atmosphere, good chorus. It’s one of Zitilites’ best tracks and even if the rest of the album isn’t one’s cup of tea, Rocket Brothers is a brilliant song worth keeping anyway.

MP3: Rocket Brothers
Zitilites on Amazon

Right, let’s crack open that Manic Street Preachers chest a bit more now that Journal for Plague Lovers is pretty much out. “Virginia State Epileptic Colony” got a brief mention on my Journal for Plague Lovers review and now I’m gonna share the brilliance that it is. Mopeyman Richey’s indecipherable and sloganeering-filled lyrics featuring such amazing lines as “pig pig piggy!” are set upon a hilariously upbeat jangle pop backing that sounds like it’s taking the complete piss out of anyone who thinks the song was going to be something deep and serious. The chorus is pure awesomeness in its almost humorous singalong tone, and check out that plinky-plonky piano interlude! Journal’s got a strong lighter side and and VSEC’s a great example of that.

MP3: Virginia State Epileptic Colony
Journal for Plague Lovers on Amazon

Finally, something from that Danger Mouse / Sparklehorse / kitchen sink collaboration album Dark Night of the Soul that’s now making itself famous by all the legal dispute news that might prevent its physical release. Fortunately, it’s out there digitally already and let me tell you, outside the Black Francis / Iggy Pop -twofer weakspot around the middle-ish, it’s very very good. Mr Ipequey of our wonderful blog establishment might give you a bit more indepth account on the album’s bliss at some point, being an even bigger Sparklehorse lover than I am, but I shall give you a sample MP3 in the form of the album’s opening track – the Flaming Lips collaboration “Revenge”. It’s five minutes of chilled out, hopeful, dreamy orchestrated bliss and beauty, not too far from the brilliant Lips album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Easily one of the best songs of 2009? You bet. Just check out that sweeping beauty of a chorus. And mmmm, the atmosphere…

MP3: Revenge (feat. The Flaming Lips)

This was Flint’s random MP3 moment, hope you enjoyed this brief dabble in me making an mp3 update for a change!

This is going to sound like an advertisement but I’m just trying to ramble my thoughts. Forgive me.

The mysterious name Spotify is currently making rounds in music forums and discussions at an alarming rate. You hear people praising it and worshipping its name, and if you cannot be arsed to find out what it is yourself or already know, you’re most likely pretty confused or pissed off at the fact that it’s currently only working in a certain small selection of countries.

I was pretty doubtful at first about it. I mean, it’s essentially a free online iTunes. So what, I’ve already got my music collection, why would I need to go through the hassle of rebuilding it for a gigantic playlist I’d play whenever the extremely infrequent event when I don’t have all my music collection with me would happen. I gave it a test though because I figured it’d be cool for Indie Paws to have a playlist featuring the music we dig.

For the past week, I’ve been using Spotify quite a lot. You see, when I thought about an online iTunes, I only thought about the personal music library. What I didn’t realise what the Spotify music archive is essentially a hugeton of free music, free to stream in great quality. No more pesky torrents with crap seeds – I’ve introduced myself to several artists during the past week with Spotify. I’ve finally heard the one final Guillemots b-side I hadn’t heard before (excellent, by the way). All for completely free and easily in my grasp from any computer I can install stuff to.

I mean yeah, the library’s not perfect. While I was searching for stuff for the Indie Paws playlist (which’ll be linked to at some point in the future), I did hit quite a lot of empty searches. Obviously, the most indie stuff isn’t there. However, the selection’s constantly growing and pretty much every album that’s talked about in some manner is going to be found from there for testing purposes.

I’m digging this shizz.

Most people rush into these top album lists mid-December, but I’ve decided to chill out and really think hard about my top 10 favourite albums from the year that once was. Okay, I lie, I just haven’t got around to it yet. But here it is anyways. :(

So, 2008. It was a toughy, and apparently not so many solid albums were released throughout its economically crashing months. Despite the drought, I’ve still managed to find a good deal of great new artists and albums, a few of which made my overall favourite albums of all times! So without further delay, let’s begin my fruity-flavoured list of top ten albums NOW!!!

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• - It’s good.
• - It’s not as good as the first album however.
• - The overall style is a bit synthier than on the first album, some songs are downright synthpop. These moments are pretty much awesome throughout. Generally the album keeps the mystic. nocturnal tone of the first album.
• - However, whenever the album doesn’t rely on synths it suddenly takes a twist to not as great and sometimes downright forgettable. This is why Two Suns isn’t as good as Fur & Gold: there’s a lot of moments that are as good and sometimes better than some of the debut’s  best moments, but also songs that are weaker than the weakest ones on the debut.
• - Speaking of forgettable, the collaboration songs (Yeasayer and Scott Walker show up here) are quite unremarkable.
• - Sleep Alone reminds me of Radiohead’s I Might Be Wrong but Batforlashified.
• - Sleep Alone, Daniel and Pearl’s Dream are the grandest highlights and pretty damn awesome. Two Planets is pretty amazing too.
• - I’d love to share some of these lovely moments with you but the leaked nature of this all makes me very, very wary and thus I won’t.
• - That cover is WTF.

This is made of win.

Lately whenever I haven’t been mooding out to Portishead’s Third, I’ve been listening to Pet Shop Boys quite often. All thanks to the leak of the new single getting me a bit excited about the new album. I’m also somewhat excited about seeing the music video for Love Etc: PSB has a rather great music video history (though there are some right clunkers there too, hello “It’s Alright” and “I Get Along”) and here’s some of the past classics, old and new.

And if you are a fan and haven’t yet got the PopArt DVD, get it now. Not only does it compile nearly all of the band’s up until 2003 but you also get some absolutely amazing commentary about each video from the Boys themselves.

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We apologize for yet another inconvenience, but mp3 downloads are down at the moment due to bandwidth issues (again). We are working to fix the problem.

In the meantime, our page on The Hype Machine has cached versions of many of the songs offered here.

Again, apologies for all of the problems Indie Paws has been having lately. The rapid growth in readership has taken us by surprise, preventing us from preparing properly.