Music News & Videos

Who: Pastoral rockers from Denton, Texas, who first broke through with their 2006 track “Roscoe,” on which the group’s classic-rock-loving frontman Tim Smith sang about life in the 1800s. “I don’t do too well in the present,” he says. “Not that old times were better, but I’m more romantic about the past.”

Sounds Like: The band’s latest disc, The Courage of Others, has a sound influenced by 1960s British acts like Fairport Convention and Pentangle, with Jethro Tull-style flutes and references to maidens and merchant ships.

Vital Stats:

• Smith was a John Coltrane devotee until he reluctantly picked up Radiohead’s OK Computer while at the North Texas College of Music. “I didn’t want to listen to it, because of the name,” he says. “I thought, ‘What’s this, some kind of radio-pop music?’ ”

• Before Midlake embraced chiming guitars and meticulous harmonies, the group was a jazz-funk act. Smith ditched his sax when he joined up with the Texas group, which featured current bandmembers Eric Pulido and Eric Nichelson (guitar), McKenzie Smith (drums) and Paul Alexander (bass).

• Like fellow bearded strummers Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver, Midlake recall CSNY and Fleetwood Mac. “You want your music to be ask great as those acts,” says Smith, “But I shouldn’t compare my work with everything that’s ever been done. I mean, you can only do so much before you die.”

Get It Now: Watch the band’s trailer for The Courage of Others up top.

This week Rolling Stone’s Daniel Kreps breaks down the Gorillaz’s Plastic Beach in our New Music Report. Kreps admits he didn’t immediately hear anything as instantly grabby as Demon Days‘ “DARE” or Gorillaz’s “Clint Eastwood” on their new disc — the closest relation here is the single “Stylo,” a catchy electro number that features Mos Def and Bobby Womack. But Plastic Beach is a real grower, and now he’s convinced it’s Damon Albarn’s most impressive work since Blur’s 13. With each listen, new highlights emerge, like the Think Tank-ish “Empire Ants” and his personal favorite, “To Binge,” which features the Swedish group Little Dragon. Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed, and members of the Clash and De La Soul all cameo on the disc, but the smaller artists — Little Dragon and U.K. rappers Bashy and Kano — make the biggest impact.

Catch up on all of Rolling Stone’s album reviews.

>>Watch every episode of our weekly New Music Report video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Tuesday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don't have iTunes, download it here.]

Christian Hoard’s “Christian Rock” new music pick this week is a 28-year-old prose/poetry writer from Minneapolis with a philosophy degree called Dessa (real name: Margret Wander), who’s also a member of the rap collective Doomtree. Her debut A Badly Broken Code reminds Hoard of fellow Minnesota MC Slug. The beats are punchy and straight-forward, and so is Dessa. One of the best cuts is “The Bullpen,” where she rhymes about putting up with really annoying behavior from men. She suffers from a touch of “underground rapper syndrome” (symptoms: sounding serious too often), but her rapping and singing are solid and her love songs are strong and nuanced. She may be wordy, but she doesn’t waste syllables.

Catch up on all of Rolling Stone’s recent album reviews.

>>Watch every episode of our weekly New Music Report video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Tuesday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don't have iTunes, download it here.]

Rolling Stone blogger Daniel Kreps directs your attention to Local Natives’ self-produced debut disc Gorilla Manor — which checked in on the charts at Number 142 this week — in our weekly spotlight of the best new music. The quintet come from Los Angeles’ Silver Lake district, and like their neighbors the Fleet Foxes, Local Natives excel at multi-part harmonies. But while Fleet Foxes gravitate towards more rootsy, Crosby, Stills and Nash-style harmonics, Local Natives draw on the Talking Heads’ brand of Afro-pop (Gorilla Manor actually features a cover of Talking Heads’ “Warning Sign”). Other standouts include the infectious “Camera Talk” and “Cubism Dream,” which sounds like something a supergroup of My Morning Jacket and Grizzly Bear would have created.

Catch up on all of Rolling Stone’s album reviews.

>>Watch every episode of our weekly New Music Report video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Tuesday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don’t have iTunes, download it here.]

Who: Nigerian-German artist whose raspy voice, deft rapping and soulful grooves helped her land a Euro club hit with “Heartbeat” last year. Her skills have made fans of Lenny Kravitz and the Roots, who backed her at a New York show.

Sounds Like: Nneka’s U.S. debut Concrete Jungle pits hip-hop beats and Afro-funk grooves against lyrics about racism, colonial powers and slavery. On the roots-reggae cut “Africans” she sings “We use the same hatreds to oppress our own brothers.” “Heartbeat” is a pulsing tribal-funk anthem that doubles as a plea for the world not to ignore Africa’s problems.

Vital Stats:

• Nneka, 29, grew up listening to her dad’s Fela Kuti records in Warri, Nigeria, where “there was a lot of corruption and poverty.” As a result, she’s always been drawn to social-conscience music rather than love songs. “I like songs with a message,” she says. “I’m conscious about making change in this world.”

• At 19, she moved to Hamburg, Germany, to study anthropology and started rapping at open-mike nights. “I wasn’t courageous enough to sing,” she said. “But the German mentality was different than what I was used to, and I felt isolated. Singing became my therapy.”

• This summer Nneka will hit the road with the revamped Lilith Fair alongside artists like Mary J. Blige, Sheryl Crow and Tegan and Sara. “I’m bringing the African vibe, man,” she says.

Get It Now: Check out Nneka’s video for “Heartbeat” up top and more from Concrete Jungle on her MySpace.

In this week’s New Music Report, we present another segment of Christian Rock, where Rolling Stone contributing editor Christian Hoard tells you what’s been on constant repeat on his stereo. This week, it’s the Magnetic Fields’ eighth album Realism in the spotlight. Featuring the witty and sardonic songwriting of Stephin Merritt, the man who gave us the massive 69 Love Songs, Realism is an unofficial sequel of sorts to 2008’s Distortion. While that album was built on feedback and Jesus & Mary Chain-esque songs, Realism explores the more tuneful, acoustic — but not folk — side of the Magnetic Fields. For more on Realism, and to hear the tracks “You Must Be Out of Your Mind” and “We Are Having a Hootenanny,” check out this week’s New Music Report up top.

Catch up with all of Rolling Stone’s album reviews.

>>Watch every episode of our weekly New Music Report video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Tuesday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don’t have iTunes, download it here.]

Who: Christofer Drew, a 19-year-old Missouri native whose lovelorn tracks, soft, high voice (and Pete Wentz-style skinny jeans) are making underage girls swoon. He was signed by Warner Bros. after being discovered on MySpace and releasing three EPs, and his first disc What Is Love? debuted at Number 24 on the Top 200.

Sounds Like: The tunes on Drew’s full-length (which he cut with producer Butch Walker) blend emo and folk into airy, heartbroken acoustic tracks like “Jane Doe” (where he crushes on pretty waitresses) and “Can’t Stand It” (where he gushes about girls who are “superduper cute”).

Vital Stats:

• Drew’s original aspirations weren’t musical, but athletic: his dad was grooming him to be a tennis pro, but a shoulder injury made him focus on the Bob Dylan tunes his father taught him on guitar. At 14 he wrote his first song after his best friend ditched him for a girl.

• Another heartbreak — his girlfriend cheated on him — set off a rough patch for Drew. He dropped out of high school, got kicked out of his parents’ house and road-tripped across the Midwest playing coffee shops and churches where “There were, like, 20 kids at each show. But I’d make $50 — enough for gas to the next place.”

• Drew says he recently got into Taoism after reading The Tao of Pooh, and he strives to live the simple life. “I like to go to Waffle House and read, drink coffee and smoke cigarettes all day,” he says. “I’m trying to be artistic.”

Get It Now: Click up top to watch Never Shout Never’s video for “What Is Love?”

Who: Irish trio the Script traces its roots to the late ’90s, when then late-teenagers Danny O’Donoghue (keys and vocals) and Mark Sheehan (guitar) made a pilgrimage to America to work as session musicians and studio hands. They returned to their native Dublin and hooked up with drummer Glen Power in 2005. Their circuitous route to budding rock stardom will culminate with two huge gigs in July: opening for Paul McCartney at New York’s Citi Field and for U2 at Dublin’s Croke Park.

Sounds Like: A pristine pop-rock act with a decided modern R&B streak, the Script call to mind a more wistful Maroon 5 or a funkier Coldplay. While their eponymous 2008 debut album is full of sunny, addictive melodies, it also has a palpable air of melancholy. Recorded during a tumultuous time in the bandmembers’ family lives (O’Donoghue lost his father and Sheehan his mother during the making of The Script), songs like “Breakeven” feature maudlin couplets like, “Still alive, but I’m barely breathing/Just prayed to a God that I don’t believe in,” sung over twinkling guitars and buoyant drums.

Vital Stats:

• Growing up in Ireland in the blast radius of England’s Britpop explosion, O’Donoghue and Sheehan found themselves more interested in the seductive rhythms of soul and hip-hop than the lad-rock that was then in vogue. “We had to stay up late to catch any of the hip-hop and R&B videos on MTV — that was the only time we could see them,” says O’Donoghue. “Ireland has a very vibrant music scene, but at the time it was mostly rock & roll. We left home to come to America at 17 because there weren’t that many options for musicians who were into what we were into.”

• From 1999 and 2003, O’Donoghue and Sheehan worked in the U.S., orbiting around R&B studio sessions run by producers such as Rodney Jerkins and Teddy Riley. “Through some friends, I met Rodney Jerkins. He had me play some guitar over a track that he was working on. I sort of forgot about it, but after a while he called me in and played it back for me and it wound up being ‘Turntable’ by TLC. It was the tribute song to Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopez,” recalls O’Donoghue. A brief audition for Riley saw them come across another up-and-coming duo. “After Mark and I were done playing he wound up handing us a tape with some beats on it that said, ‘Neptunes.’ ” Hanging out in the background of Jerkins and Riley’s sessions taught the Irish songwriters valuable lessons, too: “We realized that we wanted to be the judge, jury and executioner of our own work.”

• While the recording of their debut was a heartbreaking time in the lives of the bandmates, you get the feeling someone is watching over the Script. They’re set to have one of the more dizzying months a young band could ever hope for. “When something like a Paul McCartney gig gets tossed in your lap it can be a very frightening thing, especially considering how nostalgic that day will be,” says O’Donoghue, referencing McCartney’s choice of the new home of the New York Mets, 44 years after the Beatles’ historic concert at the old Mets stomping grounds, Shea Stadium. To prepare for the McCartney and U2 shows, the Script have been racking up the large-capacity gigs on their own, “We’ve played to over 600,000 people by now, with festivals and everything. So we’re getting more comfortable playing to huge crowds.” Not that they’re complaining, “You can’t really dream of this stuff. Each day is amazing,” enthuses O’Donoghue. “I’m in the studio, rehearsing for one concert with Paul McCartney at a baseball stadium and one opening for U2 at Croke Park, the national stadium of Ireland. I keep having to pinch myself.”

Get It Now: The Script is out now — watch their new video for “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved,” above.