July 2008 Archives

Blog postings are coming way slower than I want them to be. Okay, so I won't promise something everyday...not with all the stuff that I'm doing for the DB (which admittedly, is at a snails pace in becoming the definitive indie music resource). Of course there's everyday life to deal with, and a day job that actually pays me money to do stuff.

But, as promised, I will be posting music here as often as I can.

Where did I leave off...yes...Swedish Indie music bands, my favorite kind. :)

Today, since it's a pretty day - our featured song is from three guys from Lund, Sweden called The Radio Dept. For all intents and purposes, Strange Things will Happen is a love song as almost all songs are...(like all movie plots are basically love stories). It's about love.

 As far as love songs go, for me, there are two songs from indie music bands that I find absolutely beautiful. One is Stars' One More Night and the other is this song. Ironically, they're not your typical love songs - when introducing One More Night at gigs, Stars' singer Torque Campbell often says: "this song is about f*cking someone to kill them". I'll probably post this in another entry to elaborate, but if you know the song, you'll know what I mean.

Strange Things Will Happen isn't as intense and as passionate as One More Night. But similarly, it's about love in a different way - falling out of it. If there's a classification for it, it'll probably be the top song in the Breakup Recovery songs list. Best of all, it's a duet too. None of those I love you, I love you back exchanges between the male and female singers.  It's just like -  hey yeah, I'm over you, totally,  and none of the bitter crap about love too.

  Listen to Strange Things Will Happen

There's a couple of things about Sweden that I like the most - Swedish meatballs, Ikea Furniture and most importantly, their indie music scene. Not only do they have great taste in affordable but stylish furniture, but the Swedes have actually nailed down the heart and soul of what Indie music is - unconventional, artistic and always with a do-it-yourself feel.

I figure, it also helps that they get government grants just to round up the garage band and rehearse. If every country had that, I'd be running out of server space just to list all the Indie bands of the world.

So, to restart the blog, I'll be  featuring Swedish indie music everyday for the rest of the week. And what better way to start than to feature one of the best cover songs I've heard to date. This one is from the now defunct Swedish band Free Loan Investments - a cover of the OMD classic "If You Leave". It's far from the electro pop version that you heard at the prom scene in Pretty In Pink - this one's a whole new breed. If words can describe what it sounds like, it would be an upbeat version of If You Leave with synth horns and sung as a duet with a cute sounding Swedish girl and the guy in the Ikea commercials. (Notice the 3rd reference to Ikea in this whole article...I can't help it. Honestly, he does sound like that guy in the Ikea commercials). Despite how unappealing I might've described it, it's surprisingly lovable. If they ever do a remake of Pretty In Pink, they should definitely use this (and probably change the design of that dress Molly Ringwald's character wore - it was absolutely horrendous!).

Not only is this an amazing song, but it's an amazing song that's free for download (which makes it an extremely amazing song). You can check out the link below to listen to it or download if for free at Last.fm:

http://www.last.fm/music/Free+Loan+Investments/_/If+You+Leave

Yes, it's alive! ...though barely. This project is as indie as it gets. A one man production, with the occasional help and moral support from friends and family, backed up by the artistic stylings of my five-year old web designer (check out the awesome robots!), here I present, THE DATABASE. Be awed by its shocking red radiance.

Sadly, you can only search from 15 artists housed in the database ( I may be adding one or two more in the next few hours - depending on my need for sleep). It sucks yes...but only for the moment. You see, this is just the beginning...hopefully of something big.

All of the previous artists listed here are already in the Database, so please check it out if you'd like to see more information. I've updated the links on the past articles to point to their artist pages on the DB.

What now?

I need your help! Well, to the few handful that may stumble across this page...I know you're all indie music junkies..why else would you be here reading this? If you have any information about a band that you'd like to include in our database, please feel free to email me at submissions@theindiemusicdb.com.

As this will be a definitive list that aims to tackle the age-old question: 'What is Indie Music?', be more than free to give a brief description as to why you think this artist should be considered as 'Indie'. Comments and suggestions about the information already in the database are also welcome and you can send them over to the email address indicated above. We're still operating at a small scale here, so responses might not be lightning fast - but I'll do my best : )

The information that we have right now has been culled from different sources on the net - usually from the band's official website or official MySpace page (yes, indeed, MySpace is the site of choice if you're starting out as an indie music artist). All sources are cited in the database. Some artist photos are promotional photos from their official sites and is considered as fair use, however, I've placed Creative Commons licensed photos when available. If you're the artist or the record label, feel free to contact me if you'd like to give us more juicy info and pictures.

I'll constantly be posting Site Updates for the next few weeks since we're still adding more features to the DB, and of course more artists.

I know I promised a blog post of an artist a day when I started this...but well, I decided I might as well spend my energy building the database to house these artists first and get those blog postings up afterwards. Sorry it took me 3 months to put up a new post. Well, not that it matters though, based on the site visits and the lack of comments...there hasn't been...I mean...the millions of people visiting this site everyday seem to be very understanding, and unbelievably quiet to comment too.

So feel free to peruse our small collection of indie artists and if you want, come on in send in your artist info submissions.