British-Ugandan soul man Michael Kiwanuka has been on a huge roll lately. Besides that name-making triumph in BBC’s Sound of 2012 Poll (edging out Azealia Banks and Frank Ocean no less), he’s also been enjoying critical accolades for his vintage folk-soul debut album Home Again, touring around Europe and scoring collabs with figures like The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach. And if you’re still not a believer, well this lovely polaroid-pastiche video for his next single “I’ll Get Along” is guaranteed to charm.

Now that you’ve seen the regular version, be sure to check out the spruced up interactive video over at wireWAX - its mad fun!

Home Again – CD and digital album is out now!

michaelkiwanuka.com

When our favourite Brixton darling isn’t busy prettying up tracks for SBTRKT and Joker or collaborating with Sampha to melt our hearts, Jessie Ware has a pretty good thing going on the solo front too. “110%” is her latest work of bass-based, summery honey and its a beaut. Julio Bashmore takes the production reins here, which explains its lovely bounce and ingenious Biggie sample.

www.myspace.com/jessiewaremusic

We wouldn’t have called Monster Cat’s debut EP the best local release of 2011 unless we meant, and we mean it! In fact, if we did a top 10 list of our favourite records overall last year, we’re pretty sure Monster Cat would’ve easily made it. Our favourite track off the record was definitely the haunting and layered “Underwater” and lookie here, it now comes paired with a gorgeous Kristen Ong-directed music video! It’s just as surreal and goose bump inducing as the song so we’d like to give our furry friends a pat on head for a job well done!

www.monstercat.net

EDM deities Four Tet and Burial kind of have that infallible aura about them so we all blew our tops the last time they collaborated on “Ego” and “Mirror” (those also had Thom Yorke, goodness) and it looks like Bevan and Hebdan are at it again! Their new team-up is called “Nova” and what a tune it is! The chilled-out six-minute track aptly went nuclear hitting 40,000 plays within 9 hours of being posted up on Four Tet’s Twitter. Go listen and bask in it’s dense beauty.

www.myspace.com/burialuk
www.fourtet.net

Welcome back Maya, we’ve missed you! As if her new single “Bad Girls” wasn’t awesome enough, it’s Romain Gavras-directed video pretty much just sealed our love for it. M.I.A.’s always been fond of exotic influences (Bhangra, kuduro, Brazilian baile funk, etc) and this time she provides a striking new context for rap video hallmarks but setting them within an arabulous Middle Eastern dessert.  Nicely done.

www.miauk.com

It’s been a little while since we heard from post-hardcore outfit The Used but wahey, the boys are back with a new single in tow called “I Come Alive”. Taken off their long-awaited forthcoming LP Vulnerable, the track tames frontman Bert McCracken’s beast a little bit and chooses instead to show off his underrated range. There’s a lot of interesting new things going on instrumentally (we never thought we’d hear The Used use a xylophone) but it all works in context. That sweat-dripping, heavy-hitting power still remains, but it’s kind of neat to see the boys replace a bit of raucous with a dose borderline creepy atmospherics. The new album drops at the end of March so keep a look out!

www.theused.net
www.facebook.com/HopelessRecordsSEA

Last we saw of Boise’s Youth Lagoon, we had the Kleenex out for his daddy-issues inspired video for “Montana”. This time he re-teams with director Tyler T. Williams for yet another exercise in catharsis with the video for “July”. The only difference is that this one is slightly bigger in scale, well, its pretty much post-apocalyptic actually. Nevertheless it still feels personal and it still evokes goosebumps.

youthlagoon.bandcamp.com

Arcade Fire loves to get creative with their videos don’t they? Hot off the heels of their Google Maps inspired video for “We Used To Wait” comes another interactive online doozy in the form of their video for “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”. Amazingly, the whole thing lets viewers direct content and control characters (!) in the music video just by using their hands or mouse.

Apparently the speed and nuttiness of the video corresponds to how twitchy your fingers get (detected via webcam) so you may not wanna try this out at work. We’ve embedded the traditional video below but if you wanna take control of a dancing Régine Chassagne and her faceless zombie comrades you can head on over here.

www.sprawl2.com

Swedish singer Yukimi Nagano of Little Dragon has been lending her fabulous vocals everywhere lately and its the bass DJs of the world that seem to have benefited the most. Hot off her acclaimed guest contribution to SBTRKT’s “Wildfire”, Little Dragon returns to complement DJ Shadow on the track “Scale It Back” off his The Less You Know, The Better album. Its a great smoky song that’s now found itself an amusing piece of visual accompaniment in a cute story card set in card memorizer Ben Pridmore’s imagination. Enjoy.

www.djshadow.com

It’s been near impossible for us too keep M83′s massive double album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming off our ears. It’s just top to bottom synth perfection. And the finest of the crop is undoubtedly the epic “Midnight City”, which thankfully now comes with equally epic visuals courtesy of Fluer & Manu. It concerns a bunch of telekinetic kids running amok in an abandoned warehouse. Not exactly the kind of heavenly bliss when we had in mind when we heard the song, but hey, this is pretty cool too.

ilovem83.com