Mike Clark-Darker Machines

A former university wrestler, music school dropout, oilfield roughneck, and road manager for Tegan and Sara, Mike Clark has managed to unfold himself into an expressive performing songwriter with honest lyrics and a knack for hooky melodics.
Due for Nationwide release on April 6th, his debut album, Darker Machines, co-produced with Futcher (The Be Good Tanyas), seamlessly switches from a hushed acoustic guitar to a Violent-Femmes-cum-Sonic-Youth fury and successfully proves his adeptness at both song craft and performance.
Joining a stable of artists at the Vancouver-based collective, Copperspine Records, Mike Clark exemplifies their stance for music with integrity and intelligence. Whether on stage, or as captured in the songs on this disc, the honesty and directness of Mike Clark's music is clear to all that hear it.

Mike Clark Official Site - Play Audio Samples

GOLDSPOT

I came across this song on a Friday morning, ironically enough, on KEXP.

Goldspot Official Site

"My favorite discovery of 2005." -Nic Harcourt, KCRW

Few have captured artistic honesty, musical purity, and sheer songcraft as LAs Goldspot do on their full-length debut Tally Of The Yes Men: an inspired melding of decades of rock and pop influences with the melodic sensibilities of traditional Indian music. Imagine Paul Simon heading to Mumbai to record his next record and listening to the Cure on the flight and youre getting close.

Siddhartha (founder, lead singer / songwriter of Goldspot) is quick to pay tribute to his early influences: "I grew up listening to whatever my parents had in their cassette decks - Mohd. Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Mukesh - these were great Indian playback singers from the 1940's and 50's. The melodies were brilliant. And then one day when I was 14, I figured out that if you flipped the switch on the stereo from 'tape' to 'radio' you could hear music with English words. That's when I heard R.E.M.'s Green, and it was my first introduction to Western music."

Sunday Morning

From his album "Hymns for Disco"
Play this loud. It's so damn catchy...This is the song that will be played over and over...mark my words. You can't not like it.

K-Os My Space Site

Wild Sweet Orange

This morning while listening to 90.3 Seattle on the web, a song came on that I was immediately attached to. Off to Myspace.com and played the song over and over and over. The song is "ten dead dogs" - this band is just operating by demo record at the moment. So we can't even buy it if we wanted to! :( So check out their myspace site:

Wild Sweet Orange

I've googled the heck of them but only came up with another Blog (I Rock Cleveland) that mentions the following:
"Ten Dead Dogs" by Birmingham, Alabama's Wild Sweet Orange is a song that has taken over my sound system the last couple days. Admittedly, Birmingham is not one of the fanciest addresses for aspiring rockers. Don't let that dissuade you. In "Ten Dead Dogs" you'll hear traces of American roots music and nineties alternative rock, along side powerful and poignant lyrics. As an aside, I am forever indebted to John Richards, aka John in the Morning, of KEXP, for turning me onto these guys.