With all its zigzagging synth elements and bustling percussion high in the mix, “Bipp” from Sophie has the workings of an assembly line run by bubblegum pixies. Like a device designed to repeat something perfectly over and over, the song reveals almost all of its tricks in the first few seconds. But the product builds into something special: impossibly catchy, with pitched-up and alluring vocals conjuring distorted fantasies of high school crushes finally seducing you.

A surreal alien dog video called “Origins of Smahmpy the Flying Retriever” would likely be ludicrous or twee in the hands of most indie bands, but for a METZ video created by oddball Sub Pop labelmate Chad VanGaalen it somehow makes perfect sense. VanGaalen’s sluggish  Newgrounds-meets-Metalocalypse animation teases out the Toronto trio’s latent psychedelic trippiness you barely notice warping your mind because they’re too busy blasting it with noise. Between “Get Off” and “Wet Blanket,” METZ know how to get weird.

When Kevin Gates raps, he makes his emotions as clear as his tattoos. His breakthrough EP The Luca Brasi Story positioned him as the Nicolas Sparks-reading thug and tatted up crooner who valued love to an almost painful degree. He was just doing what came naturally, and “100it Gang” proves that his songs can navigate hip-hop radio’s trippy anthems just as intriguingly as his own character.

Rapping Gates duets with his dancehall-inflected singing side over a glittering party anthem from the Mike Will Made It School, but don’t think that the only affection is reserved for the substances he and his tight-knit crew are abusing; Gates is looking for a groupie that “bumps india.arie…not the average girl from the videos.” Gates has passed his first big test of maintaining artistic integrity since signing to Atlantic Records, but what about commercial viability? On that, he speaks plainly: “Video coming on MTV? Could really give a fuck / ‘long as every hood know it.”

After watching critics play “Name That Influence” with Yeezus for the past few days, it’s refreshing to hear a piece of music that so demarcates its inspirations as DJ Haus’s “Cold As Ice.” A stark B-more boom starts things off, before an amen break sidles up like a prospective dance partner. Before you know it, there’s a lush Janet Jackson sample and a detour through a 16-bit cartridge jam, something like a casino level from Sonic The Hedgehog. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a Foreigner sample lurking around somewhere, but Haus’s “Cold As Ice” provides more than enough enjoyment on its face without being decoded

-via FACT

Freddie Gibbs stays defiantly posted on the outskirts of rap’s mainstream, and with each successive release he makes a strong case that maybe it’s the industry who needs to change. His verses are jacked with a fight-or-flight delivery, as if delivered two inches away from your face, and even on the blog friendly beat for “Eastside Moonwalker” – storm-cloud rap with a Goldeneye bassline – the pace is never blunted. The song’s video sees Freddie treat a crime scene like his stomping grounds, surrounded by lots of kush clouds and fog machine blasts. 

ESGN is out July 9th.

Well, it turns out they should have waited. That “Beautiful People” sample you thought you heard on “Black Skinhead”? It doesn’t exist. Scanning the extensive credits finds no mention of Marilyn Manson (or his real name, Brian Hugh Warner), though it does show that “Black Skinhead” is co-written by Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter, a.k.a. Daft Punk. The zeitgeist is swallowing its own tail.

Should you still want to hear the mixtape, complete with phony Marilyn Manson sample, it’s streaming below.

Lyrics are not so important in “Words.” The most affecting vocal moment in Ghost Outfit‘s new song is the series of duelling yelps that comes after a extended section of rallying utterances and brambled guitar textures with a kick drum pulse drops out. But that’s not to say that the vocals throughout the song are purposeless; beneath the compressed distortion and winding lead notes, the lyrics come through like mountaintop bellowing in a fierce storm, and help distinguish and energize the song, like Sonic Youth with a tense, gradually evolving optimism. Guitar-driven entreaties to go forth and coexist haven’t sounded this anarchic or baldly sincere since WU LYF.

Ghost Record’s I Want You To Destroy Me is out June 24th on Sways Records.

As Noz correctly points out, M.I.A.’s /\/\/\Y/\ was a cocktail of industrial house influences created three years before Kanye West’s Yeezus, and a far less distilled one at that. “Bring The Noize” is far less indulgent and hints that Matangi may be a sequel in spirit to 2008′s Kala. She sticks to the strengths she established on her sophomore release, traversing distorted jungle, 2-step and world samples with Maya machine gun spitting her double dutch emceeing at a tireless pace. Even if the label is leaning on her for another “Bad Girls,” she’s still capable of magic under the weight of commercial viability.

I can’t understand what the hell Pond are screaming about all Lennon-like on “Xanman,” but I have a feeling that the lyrics – presumably about those sleepy downers, given the punny title – aren’t as joyous as the song’s crunchy burst of psychedelia would have you believe. You can easily imagine it directed to someone silently OD’ing in the corner, though when a band channels the spirit of the Zepp this effectively, it’s hard not to put those hands up. Even if we are walking towards the light as those chords ring out. Hobo Rocket is out August 6th via Modular Recordings.

Uncharted is our weekly showcase of independent artists we think you should hear. This week Jordan Darville speaks Wormwood, an anthemic London-via-Saskatchewan electronic duo.

eriodically, my discussion with Andrew Wenaus and Christina Willatt of Wormwood returns to the influence of voids. The emptiness in a deserted Saskatchwan killing winters, and especially on the crowded streets of London, Ontario. It’s forced Wenaus into a dilemma: “There’s all this civilization but there’s a sense of, ‘What is it worth? Like, do we deserve it?’”

Though marked by ghostly vocals and shivering, glitchy loops, Wormwood values inquisition over wallowing. Both members performed with Lazer Blade, a six person “DJ with no DJ” ensemble, and the band’s self-released debut Sunfloating (streaming, on the right) has the low gravity of an experimental turntablist’s set. Each song’s jazzy structures form bridges between the instantly recognizable spaces like Portishead and Homogenic-era Bjork and more foreign regions, like post-rock, Italian futurist Luigi Rusollo, and a crowded notebook full of anxious verses. Christina Willatt’s vocals, refined but never slick, rumble with a poet’s unflinching internal curiosity, and the same instantly piercing resonance of Julia Holter. They help to colour Andrew Wenaus’ Warp Records-indebted beat production with a singular kind of moonlight, a clash Andrew acknowledges and welcomes.: “I’m hoping the songs are capturing the ambivalence of experience in general.”

Christina, you’ve got this enormous, almost operatic voice. It’s very striking. Are you classically trained or self-taught?

Christina: I am classically trained. I mean, I’ve sang pretty much my entire life, but in high school I started to take voice lessons and became more interested in singing a variety of styles and sort of translating what I’d learned, technically. So, increasing my range, being able to sing really high and on the other end sing really low. So I do have an operatic background, but I’m trying not to sound too operatic.

Why’s that?

C: I don’t want to evoke ‘Popera’ at all. Like, Phantom of the Opera, you know, like that kind of thing? I don’t want to evoke that kind of a ‘diva-with-a-gown’ high-brow image, for a popular audience. I more just use the vocal range and the technical tools that I’ve got. Like Joan Baez for example, she’s got what you might call that ‘operatic’ quality to her voice, but she’s clearly not singing operatically.

Where do your lyrics come from?

C: I’ve noticed just going over things, a preoccupation with paradise. The concept of paradise. And recently I’ve just come to the conclusion that paradise somehow implies something that is timeless, or an experience that is timeless. But also something that we can’t really experience because our lives are temporal. And you know, there’s definitely sadness in most of the songs, but also on the other side of that, there’s also a sort of ecstasy, the striving to experience the timelessness. Striving to experience paradise.

How do you feel about post-rock as it relates to your own music?

Andrew: I think that post-rock has had a pretty huge influence, at least in the formative years when we started listening to pop music. In the tracks themselves, we don’t sample very much. Most of that stuff is either played or like, the really rapid bursts of synthesizers and drums, that stuff’s programmed – the pads, the piano parts or the guitar parts, the synth. I grew up listening to the radio and the first electronic album that I was really introduced to was U.N.K.L.E’s Psyence Fiction. And even that album has this kind of a post-rock element. So I mean, I love post-rock and in a way would like to move our live shows more in that direction, with less computers and two or three more musicians on stage.

What’s your plan for those shows?

A: I think the idea is that all the live performances are going to be different from what you hear on the album. We’ll keep the essential structure, the vocal lines, so that it can be recognizable. The advantage of that is for the live show we can use elements that we have stripped away entirely and do an entirely different version live than we did on the album.

What appeals to you about the difference between album and live versions?

A: Christina and I work together really well. We really just enjoy coming up with new versions [of songs]. We’ve been talking about putting together a dance set, where we’re having less abstract or abrasive beats and more concrete beats. And it’s the venues. You really get the feel for what kind of venue you’re playing at. You’ll say, “Okay, let’s do this really somber, just guitar and voice,” and then you get there and everyone’s got beers in their hands and then you just gotta pull out the house beat. And that way it’s a better experience for everyone.

Wormwood are currently working on two new EPs entitled Microdot 1 & 2, a new album due out later this year, and are hunting for a record label.