I’m as big a fan of Tumblr as the next 16-year old girl/45 year-old perv/20-something indie music blogger, but the geniuses behind the puppy pictures/soft core porn really need to update their outdated, unreliable mp3 player. With artists ranging from frank ocean to Class Actress consistently and quietly tumbling their freshest tracks, the platform offers a direct link between the musicians and the fans that I’m surprised it took this long for the internet to foster—a link that Tumblr should recognize and give us all a music app that actually works.

Anyway, this morning after I reloading the page for Childish Gambino’s latest tumblr entry four times, I was rewarded with his brand new track, “Eat Your Vegetables“. A fractured foot and postponed CAMP tour have put Gambino back in terms of offline presence, but online he seems to have been making use of his recovery time by working on material for his forthcoming mixtape. Shouting out the late Trayvon Martin and sampling the underwater level music from Donkey Kong (oh don’t pretend like you didn’t recognize it), “Eat Your Vegetables”—both in message and in tone—demonstrates a more mature side to the no-longer-so-childish Donald Glover that we’re sure hasn’t seen his last tumbled success.

STREAM: Childish Gambino – “Eat Your Vegetables”

“The music is not the truth.” Or so Mister Lies wants us to think. This enigmatic epithet graces the anonymous Chicago-based producer’s Facebook page, Twitter handle, and most recently serves as a scrolling introduction to the new video for “False Astronomy,” a hot new jam off his hot new 4-track Hidden Neighbors EP. But what does it mean? Is Mister Lies trying to tell us that “the truth” is not to be found in his blissful minimalist beatscape? Can it not be defined by the tags of “ambient gospel” or “trip hop” that bandcamp has tried to pin on it? Directed by Nick Torres and more closely resembling a four minute sample of an iTunes visualizer than a music video, “False Astronomy” does succeed in breaking down predictable electronic tropes by combining a haunting sample of Joni Mitchell’s “This Flight Tonight” with ethereal piano notes and a high-tech-headphone-worthy bass line. While I don’t necessarily trust someone named Mister Lies (or is it more than one person? Mystery seems to be ML’s MO), anyone who can make me enjoy looking at four minutes worth of “particle animation” might be worth a little wool over the eyes.

MP3: Mister Lies – “False Astronomy”

The funny thing that no one really tells you about your college semester abroad is that it’s basically a 6-month long vacation. True, it’s one that my parents are paying $50,000 for, but when else in your life can you drink a mug of whisky at 2pm wearing only a duvet cover or have one-night stands with names like Thibaud, Axel, and Kristofferson in the twin sized bunk bed you share with a chaste Japanese student without any serious repercussions? Um…never. Moral? If you have the chance, stay on vacation for as long as possible.

ATG SXSW Superstars Vacationer gets the importance of a good hiatus, and they’ve dropped two new sun-soaked tracks in preparation for their full-length debut album Gone, due out March 20th on Downtown Records, just in time for the dawn of the this-is-why-we-save-up-sick-days weather. Sunny, poppy, beachy, and relaxing to the maxing, Vacationer’s “Dreamlike” (complete with new video!) and “Summer End” are enough to perpetuate this false illusion I’m living under that this vacation, and my bank account, will last forever.

STREAM: Vacationer – “Summer End”

STREAM: Vacationer – “Dreamlike”

Until last month, trying to justify to people that I’m a fan of both Santigold and M.I.A. has made me feel like a pre-Anne Sullivan Helen Keller (i.e. probably not that great of taste in music and unable to articulate myself anyway). Just pick one big, young, multicultural, female act, Emma! You don’t need both! But since Santigold put out “Big Mouth,” her first single in what feels like forever off her new album, Master Of My Make-Believe (due to arrive May 1st via Downtown/Atlantic Records and said to feature cameos from Major Lazer’s Switch, TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner, and songwriter/producer Greg Kurstin), I’ve begun to feel more and more like Miss Sullivan herself. With an intro at home among the updated-80s synths and poppy basses of Glass Candy, Temper Trap, and Desire, Santigold’s “Disparate Youth” is pure enthopop bliss—but is it enough to shift Santigold out from behind M.I.A.’s neon and rhinestone-encrusted shadow and earn her the title of Miracle Worker? We’ll have to wait and see.

“Disparate Youth” is available on iTunes, long with remixes by Switch, the 2 Bears, and Amateur Best. Check out the “animated video” for the song above if you can’t spare the $0.99.

STREAM: Santigold – “Disparate Youth”

British indie-pop duo Summer Camp has announced the release of their new single, “Losing My Mind,” heralding their upcoming UK tour and validating the innumerable tears I cried over missing their performance at All Things Gold 007 last week. The single appears on their debut studio album, Welcome to Condale, but in an effort to make things up to me, I suppose, Sankey and Warmsley will release the digital download as a package, featuring remixes from 24 year old producer Dexter Tortoriello dba Dawn Golden & Rosy Cross and veteran U.K. trio Saint Etienne as well as an exclusive acoustic version of the song.

While the acoustic number has still yet to go public, streaming versions of the two remixed renditions appeared late last week and we’re having a hard time choosing between them. Like the DGRC remix, Saint Etienne lends the track a melancholic, Ennio Morriconesque spin, but they also succeed where DGRC does not in creating a cleaner, deeper cut, shedding light on the surprisingly depressing lyrics that can otherwise be masked by the original’s peppy tempo. The single drops on March 1 through Moshi Moshi Records, so until then, the English/Art History major (aka socially acceptable excuse for obsessive compulsive analysis) in me felt obligated to include a link to all three versions for the necessary comparison and contrastison. Discuss.

STREAM: Summer Camp – “Losing My Mind (St. Etienne Remix)”

STREAM: Summer Camp – “Losing My Mind”

DOWNLOAD: Summer Camp – “Losing My Mind (DGRC Remix)”

For those of you keeping score at home, this is Ghost Beach’s third appearance on ATG (here are one and two for those of you who have not—tsk tsk), confirming their status as what our good friends over at Neon Gold Records have labeled “NYC’s next big things” and reconfirming our own recent poetic waxing sessions. Even if Ghost Beach hadn’t already been wowing electropop fans from Bushwick to Adams Morgan, the duo’s new single “Too Young” exudes the effervescent, youthful sound that is all the evidence we could ever need: with a sound as fresh as a new suit and warm from soaking up the sun on some tropical yacht party, the group also manages to embody a mature composure that isn’t showing any signs of faltering.

This week we’re lucky enough to be hosting Ghost Beach at All Things Gold 007 along with a few of our other favorites, Summer Camp and Gigamesh. If you haven’t already purchased your tickets for this (probably the same of you who missed out on our previous references—come on you guys!) you can still do so HERE. We’re too young for a lot of things—financial independence (sorry Mom and Dad), all-you-can-eat early-bird buffets (actually…?), sponge baths (#40)—but a consistent source of excellent, danceable, accessible jams and a sick U Hall party at which to enjoy them? Let’s hope that’s a phase we’ll never outgrow.

MP3: Ghost Beach – “Too Young”

As glamorous as it sounds to be sitting in a hundred-year-old Villa in Tuscany, gazing out my hundred-year-old window pane at the snow falling on the hundred-year-old olive grove below, one must realize that the price I pay for all that antiquated charm is a not-so-charming hundred-year-old European heating system. Right now, as much as I appreciate the Italian countryside in all its rustic splendor, I can’t help but fantasize about what it would be like to walk around my bedroom wearing less than the ski suit I am currently sporting.

#Champagneproblems? Maybe. So, instead of crying/scouring the country for an electric blanket, I have taken solace in Fantasy Island’s new release “Alone,” a funk-infused jam dripping in sunbeams and radiating the Americana vibes that I’m starting to miss. Fantasy Island, an LA duo comprised of Alex Jacob and Spencer Frazen, claims the likes of Debussy, Vashti Bunyan, Kanye, Beach Boys as muses, and “Alone” just further evinces the group’s eclectic inspiration. An interesting mix of Motown, chillwave, and disco (yes, disco), the track is bold and warm enough to fend off even the fiercest of Venti.

STREAM: Fantasy Island – “Alone”

St. Vincent’s Annie Clark performance at Bowery Ballroom last Saturday once again proved two very important things:

1. That the intense girl crush I have on her is 100% warranted.

2. She is great at doing covers.

This show marked the final stop on the Portlandia Tour—a “unique six city tour bringing the romanticized and dreamy rendering of Portland” presented by Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein—and lived up to promises that no two nights of the circuit would be alike. The tour featured the likes of Sam and Spencer Tweedy, Tavi Gevinson, and Mekons’ Sally Timms (via BV), but on Saturday night, Clark nailed the event’s tone with a rendition of Pearl Jam’s epic 90s power ballad “Black”—a fitting reference to the city’s grunge tradition as well as Eddie Vedder’s role in the first episode of Portlandia’s second season. Donning her best baritone and requesting that he audience not “fucking make me sing this all alone,” Clark rocked the tribute and did more than her fair share to support the Tour’s goal to “bring Portland to life for fans across the country.”

As an added bonus, check out a cover of “Sleep All Summer,” a Crooked Fingers original that Clark and The National took on recently.

STREAM: St. Vincent & The National – “Sleep All Summer (Crooked Fingers Cover)”

It takes a certain brand of humor to translate on Twitter, so it isn’t surprising that some of the funniest tweets tend to come from seemingly completely random accounts. One of my personal favorite examples of an unlikely tweetacular team is Brooklyn experimental pop/indie rock duo Eric Emm and Jesse Cohen, dba Tanlines. While renowned for tweeting his observational humor and random thoughts about things, Cohen (the verified @tanlines tweetmaster himself) recently used the account for a more conventionally Twitterlike cause—announcing the group’s forthcoming debut LP, Mixed Emotions. Also via tweet, the group released a promotional MP3, “Brothers,” a familiar-sounding beachy, popish number that according to—what else—yet another tweet derives its name from “the studio where we started Tanlines, but I think the song is a good idea of where we are right now.” Mixed Emotions is due out on March 20^th via True Panter, so until then, download “Brothers” below, and be sure to follow @tanlines or miss out forever on your new go-to source for running commentary on ideas for rapper names and Girls Who Dress Like Aunt Jackie.

MP3: Tanlines – “Brothers”

There’s nothing like a grey 28º (feels like 19º) post-holiday January morning to make us pine for the lush and lazy refrains that filled the sweltering air of an impossibly distant summer. Although it’s been four months since Youth Lagoon released “July” off their album The Year of Hibernation, the song’s video treatment from Tyler T. Williams (who also directed the video for YL’s “Montana”) breaks through the mid-winter ice and reminds us of the whimsical, dreamy warmth of the song and the summer season. However, capitalizing on the song’s bittersweet sentiments of passing time and lost love (“Five years ago, in my backyard I sang love away/Little did I know that real love had not quite yet found me”), the video’s eerie shots of tears and nosebleeds remind us that beneath the warm façade of summer bliss there lurks the constant threat that one day we’ll climb the stairs to our attic only to find our parents dead on the couch, hemorrhaging from their noses due to the moon’s off-axis orbit. Whew, good thing it’s January.

STREAM: Youth Lagoon – “July”