Dark Was The Night - Or the art of gathering an impressive list of artists for a compilation

In case anybody missed it (I just found out!!- oops), check out the list of songs included in the latest edition of the Red Hot compilation released a week ago here. Impressive: from Andrew Bird to Blonde Redhead, from Cat Power to My morning Jacket, all kinds of styles by the elite of the "indie/alternative" scene today. Bound to be a few tracks you'll want to listen to. The ones I've looked up are previously unreleased covers.
An example: Feist and Ben Gibbard's cover of "Train song" here. And because of this great site, Stereogum, I found out about the original by Vashti Bunyan. Agreed, quite gorgeous:

Definitely worth checking out.
Official website here.

Brits, Girls aloud and School of Seven bells

Woke up reading about the Brits, had forgotten about it. Duffy was proclaimed winner of the night but seems to me the ones that made the most of it are this group Girls aloud with their performance of "Promise". I had never heard of them before, but just watched the video and they certainly made the most of their opportunity. Truth is the song is catchy bright fizzy brit untrascendental pop at its best, and the performance... a blast, not to miss the guys' terrible white suits and the faces they made trying to look, uh, "attractive and intriguing"?. That's always a crack....(and easier on the fans, guys, it's annoying); girls, on the other hand, fantastic, managed to stay classy and pulled it off really well (the blonde, Sarah, great voice, minute 4.07 is amazing). It's gonna have everyone buzzing; I really like it. Still best British single of the year seems... excessive; most spectacular tv performance, could be.
Estelle's "American boy" mixed with the Ting Tings was also worth watching (loved the version she did with Kanye West at the Grammys too).
On a completely different page, met School of Seven bells' people yesterday(cool) (very, they're really nice and they sound fantastic live). A few days ago they released the official video for "Half asleep" and they're currently touring pretty much all over the place. And for UK's April gigs they'll be supporting Bat for Lashes (!), which is pretty impressive for a band that has practically just released their first album. Even more impressive is how they achieved this.
Boring me asked them my usual question: what are they listening to these days? (but I really am curious!). Well, lots of different stuff but a name they dropped is Fever Ray , The knife's Karin Dreijer Andersson's solo project. (I didn't tell them about my blog, hope they don't mind my sharing it - I should have mentioned it though). Then got home, watched CSI NY and their "Prince of peace" was in it! Serendipity after serendipity.
The only pic I have is blurry and doesn't do anybody justice, but (they're much handsomer in the flesh -forgot my camera, had to use an old one)... lucky me, I get to wear a black spot !-should have made it larger though!!

Other things:
* Youtube has removed one of the clips I uploaded. Ingrid Michaelson singing Edelweiss bothers The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization. Whatever. Hell, I get it, nobody's heard that song before!. Nobody cares but...
* Somehow deleted my whole itunes library, which is pretty inconvenient. Nobody cares either but ... Bummer. For what I've googled, looks like I need to download a program to transfer songs from my ipod to the library, if anybody's done it pls let me know which you used!

And now I'm off to get me a fuchsia feathered fan !!

Today

Things I found out about today since I woke up this morning at 7.45 am (urggg):
* There's this very extensive interview to Neko Case in Paste Magazine's online thing here. BTW a very good source for discovering new fresh music I often use are Paste magazine's samplers (cds they give away for free with the magazine. You have like 20 tracks of all kinds of music, there never fails to be one or two ace discoveries - also a few very forgettable boring ones, course).
*I came across this music blog with a bitterly fantastic name: It's hard to find a friend. Yes. On the other hand, it's easy finding a crappy stupid mean human being ready to lie and hurt you for no particular reason. Phonies. Yess.
*Found out Cat Power released a new covers EP in December (Dark end of the street).Just as I'm writing this, the radio station I'm listening to (I hardly ever listen to the radio) plays...Living proof (it never does). Et voila, sometimes, the world does seem to turn around you, if only for one spin.

A Heads UP!

Who's up for a cool dance track?. Plus you can go here and download it for free... Nice. Singer is Chairlift's Caroline Polachek, lending a hand to Flosstradamus (never heard of them before, but sounds good).