What is it with Minnesota and public radio? Why do they have it so good? Is it Garrison Keillor? Anyway, here on Forkcast we regularly point you to studio sessions from Minnesota Public Radio show "The Current". And it turns out the University of Minnesota's student station Radio K also has regular in-studio performances which they then offer as downloadable mp3s. A recent session with Jens Lekman found him playing "It Was a Strange Time in My Life" and "Shirin", and he pretty much always sounds great in these intimate settings. Going back a couple of weeks, Bon Iver, whose fantastic album For Emma, Forever Ago is a big-time grower, sat down for "Creature Fear", "Flume", and "Lump Sum".

MP3s:> Jens Lekman: Live on Radio K

MP3s:> Bon Iver: Live on Radio K
[Jens Lekman's Night Falls Over Kortedala is out now on Secretly Canadian; Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago is due on Jagjaguwar in 2008]

Death Cab for Cutie guitarist and producer Chris Walla is releasing his debut solo album in January. Barsuk posted the first mp3 from the record yesterday, and it turns out he's all into grindcore! No, kidding, actually "Sing Again" sounds very much like what you'd expect a song from the Walla to sound like-- midtempo bounce, breezy, relatively tuneful, a slight hint of angst. Dollars to doughnuts, superstar music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas has had this one on repeat today.

MP3:> Chris Walla: "Sing Again"
[from Field Manual; due 1/29/08 on Barsuk]

The Arcade Fire, doing it for the kids. Fan of the band Jay Cheel made this video for a film school project a few months after the release of some record called Funeral, with the Montreal-based indie rockers' permission. Shot on 16mm film, the clip swaps out the actual Arcade Fire for a likeable cast of school children. Wearing ties, the kids rock out "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)" in preparation for the big talent show. One dude sits in class, looking bored behind a copy of Macbeth; a girl passes him a terse missive: "Come on Alex you can do it." It's really a classic work, dude.

But the surprising star of the video is the mustached, bespectacled gym coach, whose subtle humor could make you forget that "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)" probably has something to do with a Russian space dog (unless you already did?). With the offbeat presence of a Napoleon Dynamite character, the coach stands out even though he's only a minor character. He eventually shows up to see the kid band perform on the talent show stage, nodding his head to the urgent beat. At last, he and three other judges render their verdict: 9.7.

[from Funeral; out now on Merge]

Phon°noir is Berlin multi-instrumentalist Matthias Grübel, who shapes loops of his guitar, bass, drums, synths and whispery vocals into percolating electronic art-pop akin to Múm, Telefon Tel Aviv, or Lullatone. After releasing his last album, 2006's Putting Holes Into October Skies, on Quartemass, Phon°noir recently graduated to the imprint's Brussels-based parent label, Sub Rosa, to drop latest full-length The Objects Don't Need Us. "My Paperhouse on Fire", from the new album, gives a good idea of his whirring beats and warm, soupy instrumentation.

Grübel's sighing, creaking vocal delivery might be an acquired taste for some, but he gets help from Marie-Sophie Kanske, of German electronic project Transatlanticism (yes, named after the-- somehow both underrated and overrated-- Death Cab for Cutie album). The video, directed by Sebastian Haslauer and Sebastian Koch, would be worth watching regardless of the music. With chopped-up animations of record players, houses, and most of all color, interspersed with shots of Grübel, the clip brings to mind Michel Gondry's magic-realist fantasies. You know what, though? People in paper houses probably shouldn't start fire.

[from The Objects Don't Need Us; out now on Sub Rosa]

Photo by Ágata Xavier

She's self-released one record, the mini-LP Sanguine (13 songs, 24 minutes), but Brooklyn's Julianna Barwick has already played a few shows in Europe and recently appeared on Má Fama, the internet radio show broadcast from Lisbon, Portugal. You might remember Má Fama, which combines interviews with in-studio performance, from two previous Forkcasts (Kyp Malone and Animal Collective); the site also played host early this year to Panda Bear.

Animal Collective (and Panda Bear specifically) are an interesting reference point for Barwick's music. Generally, she creates tracks by looping short vocal phrases and arranging them into a one-woman choir, and the effect is sometimes reminiscent of tracks like Person Pitch's "Comfy in Nautica" or the more layered material on Young Prayer. Barwick, however, communicates with few recognizable words, letting the spires of harmony that she builds piece-by-piece do the talking. As she explains in the interview with Má Fama host Sérgio Hydalgo, her father worked in a church and she spent a lot of time there as a kid, amusing herself by singing in the building's empty auditorium. The liturgical connection in her music is obvious and welcome, adding a bit of spiritual weight and mystery. Barwick has a version of "Dancing With Friends" available for download on her website, and it's very good, but I like this live take even better. She extends it by a few minutes, allowing more time for the elements to lock in place, and her upper-register trills in the last third are more unhinged. It's beautiful and utterly transporting stuff, warm sunlight rendered into sound, and the rest of the music from the Má Fama broadcast is of the same caliber.

MP3:> Julianna Barwick: "Dancing with Friends"
[original track on Sanguine; out now on Florid]

Whatever DJ Khaled does, exactly, he was supposed to do on Lil Wayne's Da Drought 3 mixtape. The absence of Khaled's distracting barks from the version that ultimately leaked was probably one of the year's most serendipitous pop moments. As annoying as the guy may be, though, there's no arguing with his ability to gather an impressive assemblage of hot-shit rappers, as his still-great "We Takin' Over" attests. But not even a T-Pain chorus could bring the ho-hum verses of We the Best's original "I'm So Hood" to that track's otherwordly level. The remix-- yes, in case Khaled doesn't explain it clearly enough, this is the remix-- calls in some marquee (not Biz Markie) reinforcements, and turns out slightly better. Still, the gap between the video and the splashy "We Takin' Over" clip suggests everybody involved realizes this sequel isn't exactly The Godfather: Part II.

Set in some geographically non-specific hood, the "I'm So Hood (Remix)" video's little thrills come from seeing so many estimable hip-hop talents in one video. Boasts about being street are what Young Jeezy does, but he's no "Go Getta" here. Ludacris goes next, possibly a mistake because his verse is the best; he even jokes he "shoulda been on the original version" (a twist that Khaled, ever self-promotional, must've loved). Busta Rhymes is draped in gold chains, rapping at hyperspeed, while Big Boi's sing-song verse, despite a canny Batman/Jack Nicholson nod, is a reminder that he was little more than frosting on UGK's "International Player's Anthem" wedding cake. Lil Wayne beats his chest, talking about eating and Kelsey Grammer, but gets embarrassingly upstaged by Fat Joe's McDonald's quip. Birdman's New Orleans demeanor and Rick Ross's beard are also in here somewhere. Like a bizarro Mims, Khaled can spend a million saying way too much on a track.

[original track from We the Best; out now on Koch]

Illegal Art just released the full-length debut of Normal, Ill.-based husband-wife duo Oh Astro, which is entitled Champions of Wonder. The cut-up approach of the album's "Journey to the Center" certainly would seem to align it with labelmate Girl Talk's aesthetic, in this case via disembodied snippets of male and female voices over an unwavering techno pulse, rather than Gillis' presto-change-o sample juxtapositions. As the couple's lulling babble carries on, some luminous string-like synths or samples pull over them like a gauzy sheet. The track has its glitchiness in common with the minimal techno of Canada's Akufen a couple of years back, though perhaps more oriented for home listening than clubs. For a more recent comparison, Sweden's the Field puts sounds together in a similar way on this year's staggering From Here We Go Sublime; here, Oh Astro are less blissed-out, more unsettling, setting controls for the heart of... well, probably not the sun, but who knows.

MP3:> Oh Astro: "Journey To The Center"
[from Champions of Wonder; out now on Illegal Art]

San Francisco duo the Dodos will make some headline writer's job easy should they ever break up, but their sound-- acoustic troubadour meets freak-folk-- is hardly an extinct species. On "Fools", singer and songwriter Meric Long's percussive strums meet the steady, stick-clacking rumble of Logan Kroeber's metal-weaned drumming. The Dodos have opened for psychedelic folkies Akron/Family, and sure enough, Long's nearly indecipherable vocal yawps on the chorus are more Animal Collective than, um, Plain White T's. Indeed, a lot of the talk about this band so far has centered on their live shows, so it's probably a good idea that the video for "Fools" is essentially a clip of the two performing against a black background. Directed by Matt Amato for We are the Masses, the video shows the Dodos looking red-faced and beginning to glisten with sweat, seemingly fully absorbed in their performance.

Video:> The Dodos: "Fools"
[from Visiter; due early 2008 on Frenchkiss]

Late last month, Wilco was among bands performing at the annual Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans. The more contemplative side of the band evidenced on latest album Sky Blue Sky was probably a welcome breather there next to acts like Rage Against the Machine, Smashing Pumpkins, and Fall Out Boy. New Orleans' Static Television made this video of a particularly hirsute Jeff Tweedy & co. playing a nuanced version of Sky Blue Sky's "You Are My Face". Tweedy looks incongruously at ease singing lyrics like, "When everybody's feeling all alone, can't tell you who I am," amid a peal of (yes, Sky Blue haters) feedback. The last verse, like the album's American Beauty-esque "What Light", seems to celebrate the communal power of music-- pretty good thematic fodder for a big festival, anyway. The rest of the band often appear here as colored blobs, which is a nice effect even if it belies the tune's directness.

[original track from Sky Blue Sky; out now on Nonesuch]

As Pitchfork news reported several weeks ago, slow-drift drone mavens Stars of the Lid are embarking on a fall tour of Europe. During the trek they'll be selling a CD called Carte-de-Visite, which collects unreleased material, compilation tracks, and other odds'n'ends (included among these is "Virginia", their track from The Kahanek Incident - Volume 3, a highly recommended sample-swapping 1997 split EP with Labradford, who returned the favor geographically with "Texas"). "Slight on the Childproof", a previously unreleased track, is taken from Carte-de-Visite. I don't know the song's vintage, but given its clean recording and wisps of sound alternating with uneasily long silences, I'd date it post-2000, anyway. If it does come from earlier than that, it's a harbinger of their more focused and precise later work.

MP3:> Stars of the Lid: "Slight on the Childproof"
[from Carte-de-Visite; available from the band on their tour]