What Else Is There?

..:: Blue Hawaii - Sweet Tooth ::..

Wishing you had some new Grimes songs to obsess over? Worn out your copy of Purity Ring’s Shrines? Maybe it’s time to give “Sweet Tooth” a try. Blue Hawaii is the side project for Braids vocalist Raphaelle Standell-Preston and she has a gift for assembling hair-raising synth-based creep outs. “Sweet Tooth” begins with just a few repeated notes on a keyboard, but eventually the beat begins to match pace with our heartbeat and Raphaelle’s voice is chopped up and cast towards us from multiple shadowy directions. The end result is a song well suited to soundtrack a long winter’s night. Lucky for us.

..:: #3 - Purity Ring - Lofticries ::..

With the death of electroclash in recent years, I’ve been craving some dark, hard hitting, electro-hop. Luckily, I may have found what I’ve been looking for in Purity Ring. While the band still only has a few singles out so far, “Lofticries” is a lush slice of perfection. The chilling, creep-out jam sounds like something The Knife might have put together (assuming they had a non-Karin Andersson vocalist), but the normalcy of the singer only adds to the unsettling vibe. What is that poor girl doing in a song like this? Surely she must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Isn’t anyone going to save her? Best Moment: Every time the screwed voice effect drops down twice in quick succession like it does at 0:07, 0:24 and 1:50.

:: Purity Ring - Ungirthed ::

Electronic raindrops and muffled vocal beats combine with ear ringing and teeth clicking to let us know that Purity Ring is an artist to watch in 2011. Hopefully we’re treated to more songs in the very near future.