Music

After days of rampant speculation, Radiohead have finally released the video for the new single “Burn The Witch,” and what a very Radiohead experience it is. It comes complete with the unnerving sense of dread that kicks in from the moment you hit play but this dread just happens to be rendered out in a delightfully saturated, Rankin and Bass-esque stop motion animation. The clip plays out, essentially, as a prequel to the movie Hot Fuzz and climaxes in homage to the original Wicker Man.

As a reining king of ambient composition, Eno’s gift for crafting near-visual soundscapes is unmatched. The Ship, Eno’s latest work, is to be released in North America on April 29.

On the title track of Wire’s new Nocturnal Koreans EP, Colin Newman sings like he’s a working-class English dad sitting by himself in a Southampton pub, six pints into processing the 500 gigabyte collection of furry porn he just found on his teenage son’s computer.

We at ION are devastated to report that Prince Rogers Nelson, known worldwide as Prince, has died. TMZ just reported the death within the last hour -- though their site is currently unavailable. The iconic "prince" of funk-pop fell ill recently, causing him to cancel two shows on April 7th. His reps said he had been battling the flu. He was found this morning at his Paisley Park estate in Chanhassan Minnesota.

From the rapidly diminishing middle class of guitar-based music, we have the latest video by Beverly, a band with consistently impeccable songwriting that would gain more attention if not for the daily bombardment of vaguely grunge-y, sometimes jangly, faux-shoegaze outfits that fill any outlet editor's inbox.

D.A.R.K. is a group comprised of members from two of the most romantic bands of decades past: The Smiths and The Cranberries. Andy Rourke (The Smiths’ bassist) and Dolores O’Riordan (front woman of The Cranberries) have come together with New York DJ Olé Koretsky to try something new after years of living in the shadows of their former successes. Beyond the heights of Dolores and Andy’s careers, and at what is seemingly the peak of Olé’s career, it’s no wonder that the group was too excited to wait until they wrote a good song to put their product forward. D.A.R.K.

Nashville's Diarrhea Planet have released a new song. If you like the band, you're going to like the song. It's one of those face melting guitar numbers the band has become known for, and it doesn't waste any of your time as it foregoes an instrumental guitar solo break to just layer it in over vocals. That's good guitar solo value!

It's taken M83 almost three years to successfully steal Daft Punk's idea of making an analog-sounding, disco-tinged, back-to-basics dance album.

It's for the best, because Junk might be better, front-to-back, than Random Access Memories.

While Daft Punk's retro-dance approach brought on Chic's Nile Rodgers, and evoked images of '70s disco, Junk transports listeners to clubs full of green-and-purple neon lights, pink-and-orange sunsets framed by waving palm trees, and high-ceilinged bathrooms with cocaine-dusted mirrors strewn near the sink.

Sometimes at ION we like to revisit the past, and apologies for what you're about to experience. If you don't know Jim Steinman, he's pretty much the man who was the engine behind "Wagner Rock"; that style of music that's the aural equivalent of airbrushing a sexy valkyrie on the side of your boogie van. You can hear him on every Meat Loaf album, in "Total Eclipse of the Heart", and as a post-modern influence on ION favourites The Protomen.

Most bands have that immediate touchstone, the one big influence that hangs over all their songs and jump out at the listener as a way to contextualize the group within music’s ever-expanding genre landscape. Calgary’s Ultrviolence is no exception. From the moment their new single, “Better Learn How To Swim,” begins we are confronted with some very deliberate genre tropes. There’s lead singer Nate Jespersen’s familiar baritone, an arpeggiated guitar line that is perfectly enveloped in the reverb drenched amber of early 80s post punk and that head shaking 4/4 kick drum pattern.