Pusha T, “Numbers on the Boards”

“I kind of hope Pusha T‘s “Numbers on the Boards” won’t appear on My Name Is My Name, even though it’s a stunning piece of hip-hop. How much better would it be if he just spit this while we were eating our shitty lunches?”

Holograms, “Flesh and Bone”

“Like the painting that’s on the single’s cover, it’s referential, theatric, and explicitly reminds of our mortality with a dismissive, desperate echo of ‘flesh and bone, flesh and bone.’”

Tonstartssbandht, “Alright”

“’Alright’ bellows with lysergic innovation, stuffing the best hazy melodies from a dozen different psyche rock tunes and building slowly to a cliff that eventually crumbles into a shower of palpating drums and forever-circling guitar solos.”

Mount Kimbie, “Blood and Form”

“…a slightly demented soul cut with a stomping, ancient drum beat and hoary organ chords that feels like the theme of some kind of long lost campfire ritual.”

The-Dream, “IV Play”

“The instrumentation is more than a little ornate, with waterfall-plinking strings and emotive soul peeking through such selfish, borderline creepy lines as “I’ll stop talking shit when you stop procrastinating.”

Var, “The World Fell”

“Now a four piece instead of a duo, the band’s confidence and daring now feels compounded, refined and chrome-polished. If you’re familiar with post-punk, the spat-out lyrics are actually decipherable now; they’re key players, no longer relegated to the backseat of a militant yet danceable mood.”

On April 16th Sam Beam’s Iron and Wine project will release Ghost on Ghost, the only jazz-folk album with an album title capable of turning on spirits. Though it’s about a reciprocated love, “Joy” is still allows some numbing cynicism to shroud the ecstasy. “Born bitter as a lemon but you gotta understand that you’re bringing me joy.” Beam’s admittedly “troubled heart” prevents him from losing himself completely, but he altruistically allows us and our companions to through his sound. Upright bass notes glow like embers and guitars crackle and spark, weaving a windswept boreality that’s caught at some eternal magic hour. The video, directed by Hayley Morris, was animated by “projecting hand-painted water color animations into stop-motion landscapes.” It’s very gorgeous. Watch below:

Whatever you have planned for this summer, it probably (no, definitely) won’t be as balling as Frank Ocean‘s 2012 season. “Lost” is a travelogue directed by Francisco Soriano, a split-screened wanderlust provoker set to a standout from last year’s Channel Orange. 

The Beets are about the closest thing to the Modern Lovers that Queens has produced, and are back from a long hiatus for a brief tour of the U.S. and Canada. To celebrate, the band have released a video for “Whatever” from 2011′s Let The Poison Out. It’s kind of like Spring Breakers for the jangle pop set: zero nudity, disaffected slouching, and a lot of weird and magical beach toys.

The new albums from The Knife and Jenny Hval both bring a critical gaze to patriarchy, but tracks like Hval’s “The Seer” are empathetic instead of apocalyptic, using calming psychedelic drone and personal empowerment to nourish new perspectives. Droning organs oddly refract each note like light through stained glass windows, and Hval positions her voice as a similar sanctuary  a fortress, a Mother Earth, a place to escape unwelcome gazes. “The voice is a second flesh, the seer cannot go there.” But it is not a world without limits; the end must come eventually. “Where do I end? In the flames or in the ashes? My body is the end.” Burning out or fading away? It’s a blunt dose of realism to end such a dreamy, transcendent song, suggesting a clear, abiding respect for her audience not to spoon feed us the fantasy without bringing us back to the issues that inspired her, and the responsibility we all bear to address them. Innocence Is Kinky is out April 19th via Rune Grammofon.

Cassie‘s in an unusual position, half enviable and half tragic. Her 2006 self-titled debut undersold, but piqued the interest of that particular sect of R&B fans that venerate unusual voices. Seven years and a few singles and features later, her mixtape RockAByeBaby attempts to placate her cult with fire-breathing and sweet idiosyncrasies  while wrangling the pop viability that has eluded her. It’s packed with features, like Rick Ross on the “Aston Martin Music” reminiscent “Numb,” a resurgent Too $hort on the aggro sex jam “Do My Dance,” plus Fabolous, Meek Mill, Wiz Khalifa, and more. Listen below, and download over at Dat Piff.

Major Lazer, the only group in the world that can rock with the Dirty Projectors and reggae with Snoop Lion, took the former on Fallon last night for a performance of the quietly brilliant “Get Free.” Amber Coffman and David Longstreth appeared alongside  The Roots, who did what they usually do (make late night tv interesting again).

In other Diplo news, the man is apparently executive producing a (fiction) film about EDM. According to Deadline, “The pic’s described as 8 Mile meets Project X in tone, as three teens try to get into Diplo’s Electronic Music Festival.” Now taking bets on whether or not Diplo shows up in the third act to bail the teens out of jail/let them into the festival/teach them about lyfe through partying.

Czech animator Zdeněk Miler spent nearly fifty years as an animator, creating over seventy films for anyone who stood to benefit from a fable. One of his shorts, about a lovestruck Peter Pan/Jack Frost hybrid and his Raggedy Ann crush, has been revived for “If It Doesn’t Rain” by electro-pop singer Sally Shapiro. It’s awash in the fancy of Golden Books, the children’s fables where love was chaste, cheeks were rosy red circles, and there was a lesson to be learned underneath some sweetened up cruel truth. Somewhere Else is out now on Paper Bag Records.

It’s hard to see CRIM3S as anything but sincere. Crystal Castles and Salem, whose influence is smeared on these witchrave recordings, have always been the principal lifegivers to their respective, polarizing subgenres. Stay Ugly, a just-released six track EP of distorted rave to self-harm to, is aware that it exists in very last seconds of its chosen genre’s glory days, which gives it a jolt of white-knuckle, bleeding palm anxiety that’s both classic and compelling. It’s too easy to dismiss the duo on the grounds of a fashionable aesthetic, vocals that mirror Alice Glass’, and that familiar strobing sound that’s at once Mortal Kombat and Dimmu Borgir. CRIM3S do nothing to advance their scene, but Stay Ugly does help sustain it, which is probably more than most people thought possible at this point.