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Video: Little Scream feat. Richard Reed Parry: “Boatman”

While Little Scream’s sprawling “Boatman” certainly stood out on their debut LP, The Golden Record, I’d yet to find a version to share online that does justice to live takes witnessed at our own SXSW day party and others last year. Now Laurel Sprengelmeyer has gotten the full troupe together for an excellent kitchen-sink attempt in a bare space big enough to capture the energy of this epic piece. What’s more, the album’s producer, Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire, joined in as the guest drummer along with a full choir. There’s a melting pot of genres at play here —  some of which don’t always get their due in more stripped-down formations of the Sprengelmeyer-led outfit — but everything sounds present and at the fore for this turn.

According to Spinner, the band have dubbed this clip the “Live With The Clavicyclette” in honor of the bike-piano centaur they’ve based the performance on. Without further ado, hop aboard below:

Watch: Alabama Shakes on Conan

Photo Credit: Autumn De Wilde

The meteoric rise of last summer’s most promising unsigned act reached new heights tonight: Alabama Shakes made their television debut on Conan, unleashing Boys & Girls lead single “Hold On” along with a web-only take of “I Ain’t The Same” for the masses. Given that O’Brien and the Shakes have a mutual collaborator in the form of Jack White, the pairing seems particularly appropriate, but what stands out most around here is Conan’s enthusiastic live reaction to the aired cut. As you may recall, back in 2003, My Morning Jacket tore the roof off the old Late Night show before Conan took the stage and declared, “I am buying that record!” It was one of the more memorable musical moments from his stint on NBC — certainly the best Southern rock-related moment — making tonight’s endorsement feel warmly familiar. Check out both clips below:

(via Audio Perv)

M.I.A. “Bad Girls”

With all the hoopla surrounding M.I.A.’s guest appearance at the Super Bowl halftime show — in which she notoriously flipped the bird at millions of viewers (a gesture that seems less shocking than, say, Bruce Springsteen sliding crotch-first into the camera a few years back) — the fact that Maya returned with one of her best recordings to date last week may have been swept under the carpet. So, let’s set the nontroversies aside for a moment and get back to the music, shall we?

Enter “Bad Girls.” This slick, Danja-produced update of her Vicki Leekx mixtape cut hit stores along with an excellent music video directed by Romain Gavras. Complete with top-shelf production values, remarkably beautiful cinematography helmed by André Chemetoff, and the fine track at the fore, take in M.I.A.’s latest below:

Now that we’re up to date with the tunes, I’d be remiss in not pointing to a pair of particularly sobering points of view with regard to M.I.A.’s weekend television appearance: The New Yorker‘s Sasha Frere-Jones makes a number of excellent observations on the hypocrisy and faux-outrage making the rounds. Meanwhile, NPR’s Ann Powers refocuses the discussion on the halftime’s show’s intended star with great insight on Madonna’s enduring career in connection to her history of calculated — yet consistently successful — collaborations.