[Sarabeth here, back with some more jams to add to your iTunes library! Every Wednesday, I'm bringing you music suggestions - could be something new, old, hugely popular or fairly unknown -  to awesome-ify your  collection.]

It quite honestly feels like everyone here in Austin still has a Spring Break/SXSW hangover. There were just so many great bands this year that it’s really hard to get over it. And unfortunately, Powerade/greasy breakfast sandwiches just don’t help. The only remedy? More cowbell good bands.

And I’ve got just the perfect one.

Beats Antique is by far the most creative and original band that I’ve discovered in awhile, and so I share with you their second album, Collide.

About the Band:
Beats Antique is  a little-bit-of-everything group consisting of members David Satori, Zoe Jakes and Tommy “Sidecar” Cappel. Hailing from San Francisco, this band has been creating interesting cocktails of traditional world music with electronica and techno since 2007.

Top 3 Tracks:

Erase

Caterpillar

Slapdash Era

Why You Should Listen to It:
The one thing that impresses me about this album is that no matter where a song starts, it always seems to go to a different, yet interesting place. You can start off thinking you’re listening to a song  with sitar and belly dancing beats, and it can end up more hip-hop than anything else. This is great music for whenever you’re in a really chill mood, but can also be great to dance to. This album has a little bit of everything and no matter what your music taste, you can find something about it you like.

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About the Band: Anamanaguchi bring a whole new meaning to the word nerd-core. It’s a band from New York City that features Peter Berkman and Ary Warnaar on guitar, James DeVito on bass, Luke Silas on drums….and a hacked NES and Gameboy. While they are a chiptune-punk band, they are pretty unique in the fact that they also play traditional instruments like a true rock band. If they sound familiar, then you must have played the Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game; they did the soundtrack for it.

Top 3 Tracks:

Blackout City

Mermaid

Dawn Metropolis

Why You Should Listen to It: I think the reason I love Anamanguchi so much is for 2 main reasons: they make it cool to be a geek, and they make me nostalgic for my childhood. Seriously, when I was a kid I was either playing Zelda, Donkey Kong, or watching my brother play games, and this music totally takes me back. Only in a much cooler way. (Plus, I’m way out of my awkward phase now, so that’s cool.)  If you need to get moving, I highly recommend this. It makes for a great soundtrack for that morning walk to campus to get you pumped up for the day, or when you just can’t spend another minute on the treadmill.

[Sarabeth here, back with some more jams to add to your iTunes library! Every Wednesday, I'm bringing you music suggestions - could be something new, old, hugely popular or fairly unknown -  to awesome-ify your collection.]

Spring time is officially here in Austin, TX, and with that comes South by Southwest, only the biggest music/movie/tech conference ever. I may not have a badge, but I do have a massive schedule of free parties and concerts for the next 7 days. And that includes a free show from one of my favorite bands, Matt and Kim!

So this week I figured I’d spread the joy and share my love of these two with their second (and my personal favorite) album, Grand.

About the Band:
Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino have been rocking out since 2004, with Matt on keyboards and Kim on drums. They have a DIY attitude towards their music and do just about everything when it comes to putting out their albums. If they sound familiar, it’s because they’ve been featured on Community, Entourage, and several commercials.

Top 3 Tracks:

Daylight

Good Ol’ Fashioned Nightmare

Don’t Slow Down

Why You Should Listen to It:
If this album doesn’t get you pumped for spring break, well then I don’t know what will. This album makes me want to drive with the windows rolled down with my Ray-Bans on and have a mini-jam session in traffic. The beats are awesome (rock on, Kim!), the sound is exhilarating, and the album as a whole is pretty dang sweet.

Want more awesome iPod suggestions? You got it!

Flowers are in bloom, the sun is peeping, and love is hanging in the air with the sly promise of an unfinished flirt session. We’re all ready to turn new leaves with the season, and if we’re going to do it in style, we’re going to need a really good soundtrack.

With the music-festival craziness of SXSW coming up in a few weeks, there’s a bonanza of new spring albums to choose from. Here are three cherry picks from three phenomenally talented women, just in time to usher in a truly dreamy springtime.

Valet: Naked Acid

Valet is Honey Owens, a California transplant who’s been a legendary figure in the Portland, Oregon experimental music scene for almost a decade now. She’s lent her blonde elegance and burnout guitar riffs to projects like the legendary drone outfit Jackie-O Motherfucker — not to mention World, Nudge, Dark Yoga (yes, that’s a real band), and the newly-formed Atlas Sound. Not only that, but she’s got amazing style and co-owns one of Portland’s most unique boutiques of vintage gear, Rad Summer.

The amazingly-titled Naked Acid will totally save you the trouble of ever dabbling in the titular drug: it will blow your mind with its snakelike guitar work, the seemingly endless layers of delay-laced chanting, and the semi-conscious, gauzy tones of Owens’ whispery voice.

Beach House: Devotion

Beach House blasted into the music world in 2006 with a self-titled album full of classically virtuosic piano arrangements and lovelorn, if slightly damaged, melodies. Their follow-up, Devotion, is much surer of itself; a lovelorn pop gem full of somber waltzes and ghost stories full of love, loss, and desire. Perfect for those morning cold snaps, or if your Spring Break date turns out to be a jerk.

El Perro Del Mar: From the Valley to the Stars

Believe it or not, El Perro Del Mar isn’t the name of a Spanish holiday town. Nope, it’s what Swedish chanteuse, Sarah Assbring, likes to call her lovely, hopeful musical output. From The Valley to the Stars is rich with springtime fervor, bells, woodwinds, and floaty lyrics, especially the song “Inner Island,” which urges its listeners to channel onto the place inside where we’d escape as kids — something we might need to do if the grey skies haven’t lifted just yet.

These are just a FEW new albums to help usher in the crisp, clean spring season. Got any other ones you’re looking forward to that we should know about??

Hellogoodbye first caught my eye when the roomies in the Real World: Austin house had to film them for a SXSW submission (anyone remember that?). Check out “Baby, It’s Fact”, one of their best videos to date then get it here!

The feud is over claims UK site Digitalspy. For the past few weeks, the saucy Brit songstresses have been battling out their personal differences on the world stage. But now the two have aparantly buried the hatchet after hooking up in Austin, Texas last week during SXSW. “Me and the Winehouse have made up,” Allen said. “We’re now lesbian lovers,” she laughed afterwards.

According to Esquire.com, “Brandon Smith and Jeff Cole, (who’s still in school), have created the wonderfully efficient—and free- iConcertCal , a personalized concert calendar that tells you when the artists in your iTunes library are coming to town”.

How cool is that? -A calendar inside my iTunes Library, that tells me when and where the artist I am listening to on my ipod is coming to town? What will they think of next? A car that can park itself? Never.

Read the article. Download iConcertCal now.

“I’m a little bit drunk because it’s 11 o’clock and I’ve been drinking most of the day,” Allen said while giggling, before launching into a tirade against NME. “F**k off you c**ts,” she said of the British music tabloid, before adding that the editor had the smallest penis in the world.

I knew this girl had a pair of lungs on her, but how about that mouth?