Quit Mumbling

It is quite ironic that our feature is named Uncovered, as The Index are a band that have remained in relative obscurity since the late sixties. Disbanded after high school, the couple hundred pressings of The Index’s albums were distributed only to friends and family. Like John Cusack in Grosse Point Blank, today we to [...]

For a band that defined the sound of the grimy New York street corner, The Velvet Underground’s “I Found A Reason” is about as warming and as selfless of a love song that you can write.  Ah, but give Chan Marshall a.k.a. Cat Power a good stab at it, and she’ll make you feel about [...]

Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig recorded a version of Paul Simon’s “Papa Hobo” for the upcoming film Ceremony. He doesn’t much mess with the melody and retains the original’s small, hometown-stroll feel. His vocals don’t have quite the same weary bite of the original, but hearing Ezra properly cover Paul is just satisfying in the [...]

A few times every year, especially after weeks like this that pass in this hectic haze of LA heat, something comes along to knock you out of your self-involved thoughts to remind you what’s really important in life. Off of the compilation album When Pigs Fly: Songs You Never Thought You’d Hear, it rivals Bon [...]

Jamie Woon stopped by BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge this week to cover fellow UK artist Adele’s #1 hit “Someone Like You”. I had actually never heard the original, but his version takes away some of the drama of Adele’s grieving piano, and warms it up a bit with a guitar that gives it that [...]

Chillwave prince Chazwick Bundick aka Toro y Moi takes Michael Jackson classic ode to New York City “Human Nature” underwater and you can practically visualize the montage of summer nights this song underscores for all the hip kids in Brooklyn. He delivers the line “Four walls won’t hold me tonight” with this quiet giddiness that [...]

Anyone who knows “Kiss From A Rose” knows Seal’s place in 90s music canon. Brooklyn band Yeasayer stopped by an Australian radio station a couple days ago to premiere a cover of his 1990 hit “Crazy”, and damn it’s good. The trade-off of earthy tamborine and carefree guitar for the original’s outdated jazz-synth beats legitimizes [...]

The year 2011 is officially a James Blakeathon, and I don’t hate it. The musical wunderkind was on BBC Radio 1 this week to talk about his debut album and performed a cover of Joni Mitchell’s classic “A Case of You” from 1971 album Blue, a bold undertaking for anyone. Covers are tricky – the [...]

“The Needle and the Damage Done” is a tough song to cover, and do well. As pretty much everyone knows, this song is about being surrounded by heroine addiction – a feeling not easily feigned. Now, I don’t know if the songs holds any truth to British folk artist Laura Marling, but their is a [...]