Local band Witch Gardens always presents itself fashionably, a rarity in Seattle where polar fleece and socks/sandals routinely show up in symphony audiences. But what's really cool to me is how the quartet's aesthetic extends beyond clothes. After decorating concert stages over the past few years with homemade banners and paintings, Witch Gardens puts its Wes Anderson-esque style on full display in the video for "Aunt Shae/Mean Colleen," a key track from their recent "R-I-P" EP, freely downloadable here.

Video credits copied from vimeo:

Bobby McHugh (Director)
Miles Burnett (Director of Photography)
Patrick Richardson Wright (Editor & Camera)
Kyle Johnson (Co-Producer)
Christopher Harrell (Colorist)

Vidrhythm is an app that prompts you to speak words into your phone or computer, then arranges those words into a song/video. It's pretty fun. A teenager showed it to me. For a wacky remix idea, I thought instead of speaking words I would play notes on my classical guitar. Six prompts, six notes. I played a G chord. This is what Vidrhythm gave me:

Legato Bebop photo by Pierce Adler

"Holiday" by Legato Bebop

Seattle guitar player, singer and sample-arranger extraordinaire Legato Bebop recently played his first concert at the Redmond Fire House. Sources say it was a mind-blower. Listen to a live recording of the song "Holiday" above, presumably from that concert, and see a list of upcoming Legato Bebop performances below — with the first one happening Wednesday in the U. District at Rat and Raven.

Listen to Legato Bebop's dazzling debut album "Jargon" here.

May 23 at The Rat and the Raven
June 15 at Cairo
June 24 at Comet Tavern

Looking for local summer music? Start here with these reviews by twos. Binding forces include Fleet Foxes, geography and Internet radio. Sound interesting? Read on!

Father John Misty "Fear Fun" [Sub Pop Records]
Poor Moon "Illusion" [Sub Pop Records]

From the long shadow cast by crystal-voiced Seattle/Portland singer-songwriter Robin Pecknold and his band Fleet Foxes emerges two spinoff bands: Father John Misty with the "Fear Fun" album (Foxes drummer Josh Tillman with assembled players) and Poor Moon with its "Illusion" EP (Foxes bassist Christian Wargo and keyboardist Casey Wescott with others). Of the two, "Fear Fun" stands out as a total freak show. Its main constituent parts are classic psychedelic folk/pop music and an avalanche of words, spilling from song lyrics to two broadsheet-sized pages of liner notes folded like maps — filled with font so small it requires holding the paper very closely to your face. There is a novel in there, underneath the Adderall and weed and mushrooms and cocaine. Thankfully it's all cut with humor, like in the song "I'm Writing a Novel" with the lyric "Because it's never been done before!" Obvious musical touchstones include John Lennon, Paul McCartney, the Beach Boys and Harry Nilsson. "This is Sally Hatchet" blatantly borrows from Brian Wilson's unpredictable chord sequences and the Beatles' staccato electric guitar stabs. But the overfamiliarity dissolves in the sheer emphasis of Father John Misty's delivery. Some of "Fear Fun"'s charms belong to Tillman alone. Every time his strong tenor voice turns upward into falsetto, for instance, there's a little unexpected gift. Highlights include "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings" and "Only Son of the Ladiesman" with their solid strums and drums and inarguable assuredness. Poor Moon's "Illusion," on the other hand, is too wispy to make much of an impression, although its introspective acoustic guitar and harmonized singing make it a good rainy day record for those willing to listen deeply.

Naomi Punk "The Feeling" [Couple Skate Records]
Giorgio Momurda "Paintings Vol. 2" [self released; giorgiomomurda.bandcamp.com]

"Voodoo Trust" by Naomi Punk

Seattle has long been lacking a heavy rock band with no trace of the burly or grizzled or bluesy. We have a lot of guitar bands who utilize "bar rock" hallmarks. What we've been needing is a head-bang-able rock band that's also weird and artistic. Naomi Punk is that band. "The Feeling" is the trio's masterwork so far, nine slow, slamming rock songs with ghostly singing, interspersed with instrumental music beamed in from some dusty cinema intermission. The title track's lyrics are credited to David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti in the liner notes, and the album is a little like Twin Peaks: off-kilter, beautiful, Pacific Northwest-y. A motif of deeply bent guitar strings complements the slower-than-usual pace and Nirvana-style repetition. On the flipside of the bizzarro coin is Giorgio Momurda's "Paintings Vol. 2," a tape of instrumental hip-hop songs blending the flying hi-hat triplets of drug-dealing trap music with boom-bap rap and hazy '90s rave synthesizers. Momurda pulls that all into something coherent, smears each song into the next, and melts down human singing into samples of melodies without discernible words. It's pretty out of this world. Momurda and Naomi Punk know each other from growing up in Seattle's Eastside suburbs. Now in their teens and 20s, they split time between Seattle and Olympia.

OC Notes "Moldavite" [self-released; ocnotes.bandcamp.com]
P. Supremo "Street Radio Vol. 1: 50 Fedz at my Door" [self-released; psupremo.bandcamp.com]

"Weight of the World" by OC Notes

Where many musics mingle, there you'll find OC Notes, the Pioneer Square artist who does multigenre DJ sets all over town, produces, raps and sings with the hip-hop group Metal Chocolates and releases mixtape-albums on the Internet. "Moldavite" is 33 songs of spliced 'n diced jazz meets rap meets club music. It doesn't beg for attention or lend itself particularly well to dissection. But if you're susceptible to its loopy charms you'll be wrapped in when OC Notes finally murmurs introductions to "Moldavite" (mole-duh-vight) on the serene "Ill Planet," song number 19, one highlight of many. The introduction recalls his two-hour "Art Show" on Hollow Earth Radio every month, a glorified, open-to-the-public living room performance/broadcast where he stands behind a couch, table, PA and microphone and welcomes anyone who walks in from Union Street. He recently added P. Supremo as co-host, a Latin-American Seattleite rapper with much gangster knowledge and a natural knack for storytelling. He recently laughed as he regaled an "Art Show" audience with tales of his parents shooting dope by Harborview Hospital, while OC played '70s soul music. "Street Radio Vol. 1: 50 Fedz at my Door" finds him a showcasing for his compressed rap style with clear-headed lyrical workouts. His remake/mash-up of Too $hort's drop-top classic "I'm a Player" with Tyga's "Rack City" (Supremo's song is "Rain City") is right on time for summer. But "Spectaular Rapper" takes the cake with the great line "pistol poppin' action / on 23rd and Jackson."

Art via Couple Skate Records

"Freaks Easy" by Numbs

The creative activity around Cairo has gotten a shot in the arm recently thanks to Couple Skate Records — run by mainstays of the lively Capitol Hill retail/gallery space putting out their peers' music. Their newest transmission is the sunny, industrial "Freaks Easy" from Seattle act Numbs, aka Jeff Johnson. Listen to the track above. Numbs' debut album "People" comes out on Couple Skate July 15.

Warning: swearing

"You Know How We Do" by Jay Park feat. Dumbfoundead

Korea-via-Edmonds singer/rapper/dancer Jay Park has a new mixtape out, "Fresh Air: Breathe !t." Download using the link below. Listen to my pick for the best song above, the slumping Bay Area-inspired rap track "You Know How We Do."

mediafire.com/?xieq3xu1med2m...BLAMMMMM FREE MUSIC SON!!!!!!!!!

— JAY BUM PARK (@JAYBUMAOM) May 16, 2012

Hale-Bopp was the Bedouins (Shabazz Palaces Remix feat the palaceer, fly guy Dai and Thadillac mixed by Blood in palaGlow)

In case you can't understand the description of the personel behind "Hale-Bopp was the Bedouins" copied from soundcloud above: "fly guy Dai" is Tendai Maraire of Seattle rap duo Shabazz Palaces, Blood is Shabazz's producer Erik Blood and Thadillac is local soul / R&B force Thaddeus Turner. The Palaceer is Palaceer Lazaro of course, the main voice in Shabazz Palaces, rapper and producer extraordinaire. His golden vocals and smeary way with sound are all over this drastically remixed version of a much more straightforward but still pretty trippy song by Lushlife and Heems, who make rap music out of Philadelphia and New York City, respectively.

Sweeping graveyard rock ballad by Seattle duo Baby Guns; black & white video by American Ghost Dancer. Stay tuned for the lone color frame at 3:10 — the Virgin Mary with pumpkins all around her. See a Baby Guns fashion shoot here.

Now that I listen to this song again, I realize what a sentimental mood I was in last night — it was Mother's Day, after all. But driving back to Seattle from the Eastside around 11 p.m. and hearing venerable DJ Riz Rollins play Ernesto's "Reelin'" on KEXP 90.3 FM, that glassy, warm combo of piano and voice cut all the way to my heart. I looked at the digital readout on my car dash and vowed to remember the track. Genre says it comes from deep house; I say it can be called "night bus," soulful music which sounds best while cruising through urban areas at night. Both are specialities of Rollins' late-night show "Expansions" with co-hosts Kid Hops and Masa. What "Expansions" does on KEXP is cast audio spells for that hypnotizable time between asleep and awake. The radio station has an international listenership at kexp.org, but "Expansions" doesn't necessarily coincide with the time of day in, say, Sweden, where "Reelin'" was released on Rakkaus Records. It all adds up in Seattle, though, where you can find KEXP on the terrestrial dial. And I'm glad it does, because I've had more than one transformative experience with "Expansions," and am roughly the one billionth Seattleite who can say last night Riz Rollins saved my life.

Fun fact: the source material of Ernesto's "Reelin'" is "Liberian Girl" by Michael Jackson.

I won't be blogging for the next two weeks. I'll be in Korea, eating kimchi and riding the subway, looking at neon signs and beautiful mountains. In the meantime please enjoy the work of another Seattleite in Korea: Jay Park. His "Abandoned" video is above; his other work is easily Googleable. Park went to Edmonds Woodway High School in the early 2000s and then left for the world of K-Pop — a take on modern American heartthrob dance bands and hip-hop/R&B. He remains connected to Seattle via the Art of Movement b-boy crew. Of all his songs I've heard I like "Abandoned" the best. Especially those creepy strings.

"Please stop the gun violence. Stop the knife violence. The chemical warfare — let's stop that. Biological warfare — let's stop that. Who knows about hydraulic fracking? Let's stop fracking!"

The quotes above come from a lecture made up on the spot by 22-year-old East San Francisco Bay Area native Lil B at New York University. It's rare that a popular rapper speaks about feeling so deeply for the world. But Lil B has a new deal: compassion that starts in the brain.

Later in the speech, he delivers his mission statement: "Real talk, don't ever deny the voices in your head."

Lil B will play his first Seattle concert Sunday at Neumos to a cult following he has built on the Internet in the last couple of years, shouting himself into existence on social media like Twitter and Tumblr. Fans will greet him by doing the lighthearted "cooking dance" he started on YouTube and that has since gone viral, emulated in NFL endzones.

Lil B releases albums for free, online, just about monthly. They are full of major emotional highs and lows and technical mistakes are left in. His recordings flout "good" audio in favor of rough 'n' ready fidelity, a deal breaker for traditionalists but no problem for many kids.

Lil B calls his style "#based," a spontaneous, bugged-out approach to rap that is a bit hippie-ish, crisscrossing genres from ambient to hip-hop. His best and most "#based" songs are similar: "I'm God" (2009) and "I Hate Myself" (2011), both dreamy capsules for the ages, equal parts hip-hop and critique of the genre, which Lil B seems to find stuffy and puffed-up. His answer is free expression.

Lil B's project is also about the modern male, who in hip-hop is definitely less macho than he used to be and arguably is in the wider world, too. Lil B wears women's clothing in videos and enjoys confusing bullies, who in rap are often homophobic.

But maybe most deeply, Lil B's music is about life on the Internet, where social media allows us to make a second self. As we make that jump, we need to decide how real to make our new life. Lil B has decided to be doggedly transparent.

Suffice to say, he is a man for his time. And the only rapper who will say, "Let's stop fracking!"

Photo by Cameron Krone

Art by Naomi Punk

Listen to "The Feeling" album by Seattle/Olympia band Naomi Punk above or right here. The title track is my jam these days. The whole album is worth your time if you like heavy rock without a lot of macho energy. But it's more nuanced than that. Review forthcoming.

Photo by Joel Hawksley / Seattle Times

Listen to a Capitol Hill Block Party 2012 playlist here

The lineup for this year's Capitol Hill Block Party — the hip-person's music festival in the middle of Seattle on Pike Street — has been released. Headliners include Tacoma-bred singer-songwriter Neko Case, famous DJ/hitmaker Diplo and garage rock band Thee Oh Sees. $85 three-day passes (July 20-22) are available at capitolhillblockparty.com.

Last year's recap is here; the partial lineup for CHBP 2012 is below:

Neko Case
Major Lazer
Fitz And The Tantrums
Phantogram
The Lumineers
Grimes
Aesop Rock with Rob Sonic and DJ Big Wiz
Youth Lagoon
Diplo
Thee Oh Sees
Cloud Nothings
Twin Shadow
Dam-Funk
Doomtree
Porcelain Raft
Spoek Mathambo
White Arrows
Trust
El Ten Eleven
Yuna
Light Asylum
King Tuff
Psychic Paramount
Father John Misty
Jaill
Onuinu
Black Breath
Blouse
Absolute Monarchs
Crystal Stilts
Yawn
The Coathangers
Deadkill
Sandrider
Eighteen Individual Eyes
Pollens
Nightmare Fortress
Colonies
Yukon Blonde
John Maus
Blue Sky Black Death
Nacho Picasso
Kris Orlowski
Lemolo
Kithkin
Hot Bodies In Motion
Kung Foo Grip
Tropical Punk
Nu Sensae
Night Beats
Freighms
Tom Eddy
Dude York
Stephanie
Space Needles
Skarp
Pony Time
Murmurs
Mass Games
Slow Dance
Crypts
Crime Wave
Trash Fire
Vox Mod
Mama Utah
Silly Goose
Underground Revival

Warning: swearing

Two new videos have surfaced from Shabazz Palaces and THEESatisfaction, related Seattle hip-hop acts currently on separate national and international tours. See Shabazz interviewed by Pitchfork.com below in New York City and performing "Swerve" from the album "Black Up." It's cool to see Palaceer Lazaro and Tendai Maraire include Catherine Harris-White's verse on the song — the THEESatisfaction singer who guests on the recorded track. Below that, see THEESatisfaction singing and rapping the unreleased song "Game, Blouses" on local radio station KEXP, a trance-y number about feeling overwhelmed.

It was a special, sunny weekend in Seattle if you had free time and could get outside. With free, live music at University of Washington for the school's 150th Anniversary celebration HuskyFest, and in select stores for Record Store Day, I checked up on bands from the Cairo arts movement.

En route to UW; photos by me

Witch Gardens brought a handmade banner and UW-themed projection to its show Friday afternoon.

One cool new Witch Gardens song had an exaggerated slide beat, like slow-jam R&B by a twee pop band. New EP "R-I-P" is good; upcoming album "I'd Rather Be Alone" is anticipated.

Saturday morning at HuskyFest, Secret Colors (Matt Lawson) pushed his drone-poems into Kraftwerk-y, borderline hip-hop territory...

...then a few hours later played New Order-ish songs with his band Stephanie. Debut Stephanie album "One Glove" comes out soon, produced by Erik Blood of Shabazz Palaces/THEESatisfaction fame.

An hour later at Everyday Music on Capitol Hill, heavy rock trio Naomi Punk powered through "The Feeling," the highly emotional title track from its new album released the same day...

...which I bought.