Indie Pop Browse All

Scissor Sisters, Magic Hour

2012 | Label: Casablanca

By Ashley Melzer eMusic Contributor

05.29.12 After spending three records exploring the expanses of disco and pop, the Scissor Sisters are changing their tune, moving the cabaret dramatics that have long informed their music and live show toward a less nostalgic sound. On Magic Hour, instead of wearing ’70s influences on their sparkly sleeves, the Sisters tiptoe toward R&B and electronic music. The shift is in part thanks to co-producers, German electronic producer Alex “Boys Noize” Ridha and Scottish DJ/producer Calvin Harris, whose past work accounts for some of the album’s genre-hopping and synth-heavy breaks.

There’s also… more »

Regina Spektor, What We Saw From the Cheap Seats (Deluxe Version)

2012 | Label: Sire

By Patrick Rapa eMusic Contributor

05.29.12 This is not the album where Regina Spektor breaks free of that “quirky” tag. There are too many playful tics (she’s sort of a homeschooled McFerrinite when it comes to puff-cheeked drum sounds) and impish impulses (if anybody can get away with saying “Bronxy Bronx,” it’s her). And “Oh Marcello” — which calls for a Super Mario Italian accent in the verses, then steals the chorus verbatim from “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” — yeah, that one’s particularly insane.

But, as we’ve come to expect from the Russian-born, classically trained, Bronxy… more »

Eternal Summers, The Dawn of Eternal Summers

2012 | Label: Kanine Records

By Lindsay Zoladz eMusic Contributor

04.10.12 There’s a large-hearted sweetness and a willful simplicity to Eternal Summers’ pogoing tunes that harkens back to the K Records roster in the ’90s – specifically, indie-pop acts like Tiger Trap and Henry’s Dress. But while there’s something almost childlike about the Roanoke, Virginia, duo’s The Dawn of Eternal Summers (“Speak a secret language I can’t hear,” Nicole Yun sings on the opening track, as trusting as if she were singing to her first love), there’s an undercurrent of melancholy to their songs that keeps them from inducing a toothache.… more »

Tigercats, Isle of Dogs

2012 | Label: Acuarela / The Orchard

By Marc Hogan eMusic Contributor

04.09.12 “This is a declaration of independence,” Duncan Barrett whoops, with audible glee, near the start of this U.K. guitar-pop group’s superbly crafted debut album. It’s a mission statement for Isle of Dogs, which plays like a Lord of the Flies where all the kids are bespectacled vegans and therefore nobody wants to kill the pig. Though one of them is getting into leather, so naturally everything turns into a big, colorful, nervous-energy dance party. Like early Los Campesinos! records, Tigercats’ songs foreground their warts and awkwardness as a way… more »