Vincent Moon has directed some gorgeous videos for singles from The National’s Alligator, namely “Lit Up” and “Daughters Of The Soho Riots”, which you can view here. And now he’s added to his impressive videography with some live videos taken from the band’s performances in Paris at La Guinguette this past December, which you can view or download here. They’re so artfully done, they’re practically proper promo clips unto themselves. He’s currently got “Abel” and “Baby, We’ll Be Fine” up, and hopefully “About Today” will be following. Note – these files ain’t small. Which is good news when you’re watching but not so good when you’re downloading.

And speaking of vids, check out the video for “Funny Little Frog”, the first single from Belle & Sebastian’s The Life Pursuit, out February 7. I ordered the CD/7″/DVD package from merry olde Englande yesterday, but since I don’t expect the DVD to play properly in my DVD/TV setup, I will settle for the mildly crappy version from the NME.

KVRX has made available audio from Explosions In The Sky’s very first ever live performance, and I’m sure the band is thrilled about that… Naked post-rock instrumental baby photos! Awww. Via Largehearted Boy.

Some show to note – KT Tunstall is at the Mod Club on March 1, tickets $15. There’ll probably be some dancing at Lee’s Palace on February 10th with OK Go! and controller.controller and on March 22, Lee’s will host Richard Butler, sans Psychedelic Furs.

Thanks to Eugene for sending me the link to this podcast at Public Radio International’s The World, exposing Toronto’s “underground” music scene. Points off for misspelling Jason Collett’s name, but it’s a decent general interest piece otherwise with interview bits with eye‘s Stuart Berman and Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew and Feist.

And speaking of Ms Leslie, JAM! takes a few minutes of her time and gets a peek at the upcoming year in Feist. No mention of the live album but look for the new studio record this Fall.

I got my first cease-and-desist yesterday! Someone objected to the mp3s I’d posted for my year-end list and, via DMCA, contacted my webhosting to lay the smackdown on me. Thankfully, they just removed the offending directory and didn’t shut me down, but I guess I’ve found the limits of what I can get away with in terms of posting files. All this means, really, is that my list for 2006 will only have links to legally available tracks already online. The year-end is really the only time I ever rip tracks myself, but I guess that’s not kosher. I don’t know which track in particular raised the ire in question, but I have my suspicions. Y’know, a quick email is all it would have taken. No need to involve the authorities.

Also fun – I spent the night re-upping about 25GB of music to my iPod. It has been crashing with increasing frequency, doing the “won’t play” thing now once a day… A reset and it’s fine, but it’s annoying. So I wiped the drive and reinstalled the software and hopefully that will set it straight. If not… guh. I don’t want to think about that.

But on the plus side, I did get a copy of The Radio Dept’s Lesser Matters on LP for a mere $10 and to tie today’s post alllll back up in a tidy bow, I also got a copy of Alligator on vinyl the day before yesterday. So you DMCA punks can keep your digital music. I got records.

np – Crooked Fingers / Crooked Fingers