Anneke HymmenMontrealer Mike Feuerstack isn’t anything resembling a household name but if you’ve got records from Belle Orchestre, Angela Desveaux or The Wooden Stars in your collection – and you probably should – then you’ve got his name in your liner notes. But if not, then you probably don’t have anything from his solo project Snailhouse and that’s a shame – but one you can easily rectify with his new album Sentimental Gentleman when it’s released on May 24.

In his other bands, it’s his virtuoso musicianship that’s on display but with Snailhouse, his songwriting chops take centre stage. There’s still plenty of tasty guitarwork throughout, but it’s largely of the laid back variety as it’s in support of his gently rootsy tunes. Thoughtful and introspective, it’s not the sort of record that attracts your attention with frantic arm waving, but an easy demeanour and welcoming smile. And while there’s plenty other shinier and more immediate roadside attractions on the musical landscape, those who take the time to investigate Snailhouse’s low-key charms will be rewarded with a thoughtful and understatedly witty collection of songs that won’t necessarily change your life, but will certainly make it more pleasant for a half hour or so, and moreso with each visit.

Exclaim is currently streaming the whole of Sentimental Gentleman. Snailhouse is just wrapping a tour of Europe and will kick off a North American leg next week with a date at Toronto’s Dakota Tavern on May 26.

MP3: Snailhouse – “I Never Woke Up”
MP3: Snailhouse – “Sentimental Gentleman”
Stream: Snailhouse / Sentimental Gentleman

Joel Plaskett has announced the released of a rarities compilation entitled EMERGENCYs, false alarms, shipwrecks, castaways, fragile creatures, special features, demons and demonstrations, due to hit stores on June 14 – Chart has details and as a teaser, here’s one of the tracks from it. Plaskett will play a free show June 10 at Metro Square as part of the LuminaTO festival.

MP3: Joel Plaskett – “When I Go”

The release this week of Diaper Island, the latest from Calgary’s Chad Vangaalen, has brought the media a-calling. Check out features at The Globe & Mail, NXEW, Paste, The Calgary Herald and Exclaim. Van Gaalen headlines The Great Hall on June 18 for NXNE and a new MP3 and video from the album have just been released.

MP3: Chad Van Gaalen – “Peace On The Rise”
Video: Chad Van Gaalen – “Peace On the Rise”

Austra is getting similar attention for her just-released debut Feel It Break. There’s interviews at NOW, hour.ca, Resonancity, Clash, aux.tv and Chart. Austra has a sold-out show at Lee’s Palace tonight.

Timber Timbre have released a new video from Creep On Creepin’ On.

Video: Timber Timbre – “Black Water”

Also with a new video – Montreal’s No Joy, from their debut Ghost Blonde. Their NXNE showcase is June 17 at The Horseshoe.

Video: No Joy – “Maggie Says I Love You”

Little Scream gets in on the “hey I have a new video” meme with one from The Golden Record. hour.ca has an interview with the artist, who plays The Mod Club on June 14 opening up for The Antlers.

Video: Little Scream – “Red Hunting Jacket”

And from The Wilderness Of Manitoba is a new clip from When You Left The Fire.

Video: The Wilderness Of Manitoba – “Orono Park”

Great Lake Swimmers’ Spinner about his contributions to The National Parks Project, the documentary film which pairs Canadian musicians with Canada’s national parks. A release show for the soundtrack, featuring many of the artists who contributed, happens tonight at The Royal – tickets are $15. Here’s one of the performances from the film, featuring Cadence Weapon, Woodpigeon’s Mark Hamilton and Laura Barrett in a teepee in Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta. Click through to video number four. Also check out interviews with the film’s directors at NOW and Torontoist.

Video: Laura Barrett, Cadence Weapon, Mark Hamilton – “The Humble Fawn”

And similar-sounding but not at all related is The Parks Canada Experience, which is notable because a) it’s funded by our tax dollars and b) it will be throwing a party at the foot of the CN Tower this Saturday, May 21, which will feature free performances from Malajube and Apostle Of Hustle, amongst others. It runs from 11AM to 7PM. For more specifics on the what and the when… I don’t know, contact your local MP.

MP3: Malajube – “Synesthesie”
MP3: Apostle Of Hustle – “Perfect Fit”

I’ve been waiting ages for a Kathryn Calder live date in support of her excellent solo debut Are You My Mother and when one is finally announced – it’s in conflict with not one but two other must-see shows. Which is to say that when she’s playing The Tranzac’s Southern Cross Lounge on June 10, I will be at Okkervil River at The Phoenix having already given up seeing Weeping Tile at Lee’s Palace. Life is so unfair.

MP3: Kathryn Calder – “Arrow”
MP3: Kathryn Calder – “Slip Away”

Fucked Up have been added to the NXNE lineup with two shows on June 16 – one free engagement at Yonge-Dundas Square early that evening and another late-nighter at Wrongbar. They’re also opening for Foo Fighters at The Air Canada Centre on August 9. David Comes To Life is out June 7.

MP3: Fucked Up – “Ship Of Fools”

Also added to the NXNE lineup, despite having just announced their own August 1 show at The Horseshoe, is Handsome Furs. They will preview new record Sound Kapital at The Garrison at 1AM on June 18.

MP3: Handsome Furs – “Radio Kaliningrad”

And in addition to his set at Yonge-Dundas Square on June 17, Diamond Rings will be at Wrongbar at midnight on June 18. This, of course, is all in addition to his set opening up (again) for Robyn on June 3 at Echo Beach.

MP3: Diamond Rings – “Something Else”

Diamond Rings has also started up a remix series wherein he’ll release a new remix each Tuesday leading up to the June 21 US major label reissue of his album Special Affections. The first entry is a track from Miracle Fortress, whose own Was I The Wave? just came out Stateside this week – there’s a new MP3 from it available to download to mark the occasion. Spinner talks turkey with Graham Van Pelt.

MP3: Miracle Fortress – “Miscalculations”
MP3: Miracle Fortress – “Raw Spectacle” (Diamond Rings remix)

Sloan’s 20th anniversary video back-pat series rolls on, now including installments for “Underwhelmed medley”, “Your Favourite Sloan Lyric”, a rendering of “People Of The Sky” by Owen Pallett and “Sloan’s influence”. Sloan play The Mod Club on June 22.

Rolling Stone is streaming an unreleased Neil Young song circa the mid-80s, due to appear on the Archives release A Treasure, out June 14.

Frank YangThere’s not a lot of cross-Canada tours that skip over Toronto, but the Exclaim/Scion-sponsored country-wide trek headlined by Shad, and for this leg also featuring fellow Polaris shortlist alumni Miracle Fortress, looked to be doing just that with Thursday night’s show at Wrongbar presented as a private show, attended by contest winners and attendees of Exclaim’s 19th anniversary party which went before the show. But it’s not as though either artist had been strangers hereabouts lately – both performed in March as part of Canadian Musicfest, and both had more upcoming local dates over the next couple of months; if you wanted to see either of them, you will still have your chances. If you wanted some of the tasty hors d’oeuvres and free beer that was being handed out to party guests… well, sorry – can’t help you there.

But if you were curious about how the show itself went, that I can comment on. I’ve already talked about how much I like Miracle Fortress’ second album, the gorgeous blend of new wave and classic pop that is Was I The Wave?, and so was pretty excited to see/hear it live armed with an intimate knowledge of its contents rather than just the one-week head start I had in March. And while this performance was pretty similar in structure and presentation to that previous show – Graham Van Pelt on guitars, keys, and general sonic sorcery and Greg Napier on drums, a few laser-lighting and strobe effects and a lot of darkness – there were a few fresh observations.

In particular, the realization that as much as Van Pelt is often characterized as preferring to studio to the stage and only touring because it’s necessary, the live Miracle Fortress experience is as intricately arranged and choreographed in its way as the record – whereas the touring incarnation of Miracle Fortress changed a fair bit over the course of promoting 2007’s Five Roses, it’s pretty clear that Van Pelt knew exactly how he wanted Was I The Wave? to be presented live. The way that the duo are able to recreate all the nuances and textures of Was I The Wave? while incorporating a few more visceral live flourishes to keep it from feeling to pre-programmed was quite impressive, as was the fact that even with all the multi-tasking he needs to manage, Van Pelt’s vocals were pitch-perfect. In short, Miracle Fortress sounded fantastic.

And while Shad is always fantastic live as a performer, you couldn’t say that his hour-long headlining set sounded fantastic. Somehow Miracle Fortress’ elaborate setup was easier to amplify than Shad’s mic, turntable and bassist because he had to fight his way through feedback, poor levels and generally muddy sound. Luckily, though, he was in a fighting mood and despite all of that, he put on the most aggressive show I’ve seen from him yet. I don’t mean that in any sort of confrontational sense – that’s not Shad’s game – but just in the amount of energy and enthusiasm he put into it. If you’ve seen him before, you know that his baseline is pretty energetic; this was better.

For his set, he drew heavily on last year’s breakout TSOL and took advantage of the city to invite some guests out; Lisa Lobsinger of Reverie Sound Revue and Broken Social Scene to reprise her parts on “Rose Garden” and Grand Analog’s Odario Williams to take lead on their track “Electric City”, on which Shad guested. But from my perspective, the most memorable guest was the hopefully drunken girl who barged her way to the front for the last few songs of the set and proceeded to writhe and gyrate all over the stage monitors like she was auditioning for a Warrant video. I’m really not sure what she was trying to accomplish – though if it was to be laughed at by the rest of the audience, the club staff and security she succeeded – but as many points as Shad scored for the rest of his set, he gets bonus for not getting distracted. Wish I could say the same but I was doing my best to not get elbowed in the head by her dance moves. Memorable, if nothing else.

BlogTO was also on hand for wasabi mashed potatoes and a review of the show. Ca Va Cool , hour.ca, The Vancouver Sun and See interview Graham Van Pelt; Was I The Wave? gets a US release tomorrow. Shad will be playing at showcase to be announced as part of NXNE and also a free Canada Day show at Metro Square as part of the Toronto Jazz Festival. Miracle Fortress will be at The Phoenix on June 9 as support for Junior Boys. Update: Shad will perform at The New Social on June 18.

Photos: Shad, Miracle Fortress @ Wrongbar – May 12, 2011
MP3: Shad – “Rose Garden”
MP3: Shad – “Yaa I Get It”
MP3: Shad – “I’ll Never Understand”
MP3: Miracle Fortress – “Raw Spectacle”
MP3: Miracle Fortress – “Have You Seen In Your Dreams”
Video: Shad – “Keep Shining”
Video: Shad – “We Myself & I”
Video: Shad – “Rose Garden”
Video: Shad – “Yaa I Get It”
Video: Shad – “The Old Prince Still Lives At Home”
Video: Shad – “I Don’t Really Like To”
Video: Shad – “Brother (Watching)”
Video: Miracle Fortress – “Maybe Lately”
Video: Miracle Fortress – “Have You Seen In Your Dreams”

DIY, Spinner and BlogTO talk to Katie Stelmanis of Austra, whose record Feel It Break is out tomorrow and who plays Lee’s Palace on May 19.

Spinner talks to Suuns, who are playing the Horseshoe on June 17 as part of NXNE.

Ottawa XPress profiles The Balconies, whose NXNE showcase goes at 1AM the evening of June 18 at Sneaky Dee’s.

Yours Truly has a stunningly-shot video performance from Basia Bulat playing a new song.

Modern Superstitions quietly rolled out a sharp new video a couple months ago. Worth a watch, as is the band themselves.

Video: Modern Superstitions – “Mercy Line”

Spinner talks to Will Whitwham of The Wilderness Of Manitoba about taking their folk-pop around the world.

Southern Souls has both audio and video from The Darcys’ show at Steam Whistle Brewing a couple weeks ago.

Five words that I never thought I’d see together – Fucked Up and Air Canada Centre (unless it was in the context of how the Leafs do on the ice). And yet Toronto’s premiere hardcore outfit will indeed be going arena-sized on August 9 when they open up for Foo Fighters. And on top of it all, Montreal pop-punkers from the ’90s The Doughboys are back together and will also be on the bill. Fun fact – my band in high school covered The Doughboys’ “Shine” because I liked playing the riff. Yes, I basically made a hash of it every time; I fail to see what that has to do with anything. Fucked Up’s David Comes To Life is out June 7 and the band have released a mini-doc video talking about the new record.

MP3: Fucked Up – “Queen Of Hearts”
Video: Foo Fighters – “Rope”
Video: Doughboys – “Shine”

Handsome Furs have made the first MP3 from their forthcoming Sound Kapital available to download without and bloodletting or having to sign up for any mailing lists. The record is out June 28.

MP3: Handsome Furs – “What About Us”

Efforts to catch Sloan’s in-store at Sonic Boom on Saturday were largely foiled thanks to the TTC, who got me there about 40 minutes later than expected. As a result, I couldn’t see anything and there won’t be much writeup beyond saying that The Double Cross continues to impress me with how top-to-bottom great it is, they’re still not nor will they likely ever be an airtight live band but that’s part of their charm and I’m going to have to hit their June 22 show at The Mod Club now. In the meantime, check out this Q&A with Patrick Pentland as the band prepare to commandeer the Magnet website for a week, this guided tour of Sloan’s rehearsal space at Metro, this review/reminiscence of the record/band from Dave Ullrich of Inbreds at Thick Specs and two more installments in their video tributes – a choral “Everything You’ve Done Wrong” and celebrities choosing their favourite Sloan albums.

Norman Wong I never really liked Katie Stelmanis. I am not referring to the person – I don’t know her but I’m sure she’s lovely – but her musical project which, circa 2008 at least, was named simply for herself. In Spring of that year, I saw her twice in the span of a week and a bit and while I acknowledged that she was up to something interesting with her distinctive, operatic voice and skeletal synth-and-percussion backing, but it wasn’t doing it for me and as such, I didn’t pay much heed to her debut album Join Us. I did note, however, that her musical identity continued to publicly morph – for a while she was going just by her surname, and then adopted the guise of Private Life before changing once again to Austra. And while there’d always been a degree of local chatter about what she was up to, that’s when I heard people really begin to talk.

And putting aside past prejudices to give Feel It Break, her debut as Austra, a listen I could understand why. Stelmanis’ most distinctive characteristic has always been her voice but it needed the proper context. Obviously I didn’t think the classical/medieval/gothic atmosphere of her eponymous project worked, unless unsettling was what she was going for, but in giving Austra a sleek, synth-heavy, New Wave/80s-industrial personality, she’s found a winning formula that balances mystery and experimentalism with melody and accessibility.

It’s interesting how so much of what makes Austra was already there three years ago, including percussionist Maya Postepski, but now with the addition of ex-Spiral Beach bassist Dorian Wolf and a greater focus on making the songs danceable and memorable, it all sounds completely fresh and new. Okay, perhaps that’s not the most accurate way of putting it since what Stelmanis’ was doing in her self-titled days was technically far more original, but giving Austra its more familiar-sounding reference points has inarguably made her better. Enough so that you can consider me convinced, which is honestly not something I ever thought I’d be saying. Back in 2008, when people around town were talking about how great Katie Stelmanis was, all I could say was, “really?”. Now, when people everywhere are talking about how great Austra is, all I can say is, “really”.

Feel It Break is out next Tuesday, May 17, and Austra plays a hometown record release show a couple nights later on May 19 at Lee’s Palace.

MP3: Austra – “Lose It”
MP3: Austra – “The Beat And The Pulse”
Video: Austra – “Lose It”
Video: Austra – “The Beat And The Pulse”
Stream: Austra / Feel It Break

Bruce Peninsula have released installment three in their Fire Sale series; a Pentangle cover that you can both listen to and watch. Open Flames is out in the Fall.

MP3: Bruce Peninsula – “Light Flight”
Video: Bruce Peninsula – “Light Flight”

Southern Souls serves up a video session with Woodpigeon, who in turn have made MP3s of a recent show in Turin, Italy available to download.

MP3: Woodpigeon – “Knock Knock” (live in Turin)

Spinner has an interview with The Rural Alberta Advantage’s Nils Edenloff and has also premiered another Southern Souls-produced live video, this one for “Tornado 87”.

Beatroute and The Vancouver Sun talk to Taylor Kirk of Timber Timbre.

Wood & Wires has posted a couple of basement session videos from The Darcys.

Beatroute, The Winnipeg Free Press, Uptown and The Leader-Post talk to Graham Van Pelt of Miracle Fortress, while aux.tv gets him to unplug for a Camera Music performance. He may be similarly unamplified (or not) when he plays an in-store at Soundscapes this Friday, May 13, at 4PM. He’s at The Phoenix with Junior Boys on June 9.

MP3: Miracle Fortress – “Raw Spectacle”

Chart talks to Fucked Up frontman Damian Abraham about the inadvertent bloodletting that occurred at a recent show, which you can watch for yourself thanks to the magic of YouTube. Exclaim also reports that the band have put up a mixed tape – as in an actual cassette – of Fucked Up rarities, tracks from friends and side-projects and whatnot – for sale in their webstore. Their new album David Comes To Life is out June 7.

The Balconies are finally back with some new material; while a release date for their second album is still forthcoming, a new 7″ a-sided by “Kill Count” will be released on June 14, just ahead of their June 18 NXNE showcase at Sneaky Dee’s.

The Fly invites The Dears into their courtyard for an acoustic session. The notoriously self-serious band also paid Funny Or Die a visit.

With the release this week of The Double Cross, the twentieth anniversary of Sloan is well underway. Blurt has a feature interview with the band, Chart has unearthed a bunch of interviews with the band over their long career and the first of ten tribute videos wherein actors, musicians and general celebrities reminisce about what Sloan has meant to them has been released – so far, there’s “First Heard Sloan” and “Favourite Sloan Song”. They play an in-store this Saturday at Sonic Boom at 4PM and the Mod Club on June 22.

Chad Van Gaalen’s new record Diaper Island is streaming in whole at MuchMusic in advance of its official release next week. He plays The Great Hall on June 18 as part of NXNE.

Stream: Chad Van Gaalen / Diaper Island

Pitchfork has more details on the forthcoming Scenes From The Suburbs CD/DVD set from Arcade Fire. It will be out on August 2.

Exclaim talks to Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Efrim Manuel Manuck about his various ongoing projects, including the Godspeed reunion and his forthcoming solo record High Gospel, out May 24.

Ticket info for the Weeping Tile/King Cobb Steelie/Have Not Been The Same book release I mentioned a couple weeks back has been revealed – advance tickets will be $18, on sale tomorrow, with proceeds going to the Centre for Addiction & Mental Health.

And some Can-con love across the pond; Drowned In Sound takes a look at what’s happening musically in Toronto right now and The Line Of Best Fit have released their sixteenth (16th) Oh! Canada compilation of downloadable goodness.

Yep RocThis is not a review of the new Sloan record, the twentieth-anniversary saluting The Double Cross, even though it is out next Tuesday and the time would be about right to do a review. I will say that it’s probably their best record in over a decade, though, and one that I didn’t think they had in them anymore. Quite pleased to be wrong about that.

I’ll offer more complete thoughts on it at a later date, but for now it warrants pointing out that Exclaim is streaming the whole of the new record until Monday and CBC Radio 3 has got the band’s complete discography – including the new album and non-album tracks collected on their B-Sides Win digital comp – available to stream on their Radio 3 page. Randomly clicking through the enormous list of tunes is the perfect way to remind yourself of why they were and are still, on occasion, one of Canada’s greatest pop bands.

The band plays an album release in-store set at Sonic Boom next Saturday, May 14 at 4PM and have scheduled a full gig – their first regular Toronto show in recent memory – at The Mod Club on June 22. Tickets for that are $22.50 in advance.

MP3: Sloan – “Follow The Leader”
MP3: Sloan – “The Answer Was You”
Stream: Sloan / The Double Cross

Fucked Up have made good on their promise to release four preview MP3s in advance of the June 7 release of David Comes To Life. Grab them all below while reading through the website they’ve set up for it.

MP3: Fucked Up – “The Other Shoe”
MP3: Fucked Up – “Ship Of Fools”
MP3: Fucked Up – “A Little Death”
MP3: Fucked Up – “Queen Of Hearts”

NPR has posted a studio session with Caribou, recorded at Los Angeles’ KCRW.

The Line Of Best Fit interviews Timber Timbre.

Southern Souls have collected all of the Rural Alberta Advantage church-set videos that have been surfacing – three so far – in one place while VBS visits the band’s rehearsal space.

PJ Harvey has completed the video series for her latest album Let England Shake, premiering the final clip at Vanity Fair, along with a chat with director Seamus Murphy about the clip, while NME have helpfully gathered all the other clips together in one place.

Video: PJ Harvey – “All And Everyone”

Exclaim reports that Radiohead will perform The King Of Limbs in its entirety for BBC broadcast on July 1.

Elbow have released a little mini-doc to go along with their new album build a rocket boys!

Video: Elbow: Rocket Science

BrooklynVegan talks to Faris Badwan and Rachel Zeffira of Cat’s Eyes.

dose.ca, The Boston Globe and The Chicago Sun-Times interview Peter Bjorn & John, in town for both an in-store at Sonic Boom and full show at Lee’s Palace on Friday.

And apologies if you’ve been experiencing site slowness the last few days; been trying to figure out what’s going on, whether it’s WordPress install, my PHP server, database, hosting, whatever. None of the evidence points to a single cause but it has definitely been grindy lately. And if you’re someone who’s good at troubleshooting stuff like this and feel like helping out, please get in touch.

Andre GueretteI have a confession to make; I lied to you. Or more accurately, I misled you. When I wrote up Miracle Fortress’ performance at Canadian Musicfest last month, I made it out that I was as in the dark about what Graham Van Pelt had in store for album number two as most everyone else, and that my insights were based entirely on the show. This was not true. In fact, I’d gotten advanced a copy of Was I The Wave? a week or so earlier but had to keep mum about it as word of its existence was still under wraps. I was thankful for the heads up, though, because otherwise my writeup of the two-man, laser-lit rave-down may well have amounted to, “well that was different”.

After all, Miracle Fortress’ debut Five Roses was an unexpected ’60s-via-’00s classic pop jewel that came out of nowhere to end up on the 2007 Polaris Music Prize short list despite being released barely a week before the eligibility period ended. Pretty high expectations are sure to follow a debut like that, so maybe it’s no surprise that rather than rush into a follow-up, Van Pelt turned his attentions to his other band Think About Life and let ideas for Miracle Fortress percolate for a few years.

It’s not unreasonable to call Was I The Wave? a sequel to Five Roses if it’s meant in the sense of a a part two picking up not where the original left off, bu twenty years into the future. Which in this case would bring things smack dab into the ’80s, and indeed Wave is unabashed in planting its stylistic flag in that most distinctive-sounding of decades. A delicious New Wave-y, synth-pop iciness pervades much of the record, both in the writing and arrangements of the songs and the textures used to render them. Danceable yet not at all disco, at points it’s reminiscent of the period where Joy Division transitioned into New Order and at others, it reminds me how proud I am of the “Depeche Shop Boys” reference I made in the live review. It’s all a bit alien at first, but with enough familiar touchstones to allow you to keep up.

About midway through – actually, precisely with “Spectre” – said iciness begins to thaw and some of the Five Roses warmth begins to shine through. The melodies become more buoyant, less guarded, and the album’s tonal balance begins tilting towards the human. But it’s the record’s ability to balance the synthetic and the organic – its cyborg nature, if you will – that makes it so exceptional. By the end of its not-quite 40 minute running time, it’s taken you back to the same magical pop heights as Five Roses but taken a completely different route to get there. Turns out all you needed was to trust Van Pelt to guide you.

Was I The Wave? is out now in Canada and will be out May 17 in the US. Exclaim has made Miracle Fortress their cover story this month, and have more talk time with Van Pelt in another shorter piece. The Montreal Gazette also has a feature piece. Miracle Fortress’ extensive touring itinerary takes them across Canada in the company of Shad through May, and then come June it’s eastern North America with Junior Boys, a tour with starts June 9 in Toronto at The Phoenix.

MP3: Miracle Fortress – “Raw Spectacle”

Pitchfork is streaming the first single from the Junior Boys’ new record It’s All True, due June 14.

The Quietus and Spinner talk to Katie Stelmanis of Austra, whose debut Feel It Break is out May 17. They play Lee’s Palace two nights later for a hometown record release show.

The Wild Honey Pie has a video session with Snowblink, who have a date at The Music Gallery on June 16 as part of NXNE.

Bruce Peninsula continues their Fire Sale campaign to the Fall release of Open Flames, this time with a Daytrotter session.

Baeble Music is streaming video of a complete Rural Alberta Advantage performance from The Phoenix (in Austin) from SXSW and has a video interview chaser for good measure. The band are at The Phoenix (in Toronto) this Friday night.

Consquence Of Sound is streaming the third advance single from Fucked Up’s David Comes To Life, out June 7.

The Waterloo Record and Spinner profile Malajube, who have an April 30 date at The Horseshoe.

The Coast, The Sheaf, Here and The Telegram talk to Dan Mangan, who should have a new record out before the year is out.

This month’s Exclaim timeline feature follows the long and storied career of Sloan, which will soon include the May 10 release of The Double Cross, a May 14 in-store at Sonic Boom and – just announced – an extensive North American tour that includes their first non-festival/event Toronto show in ages, a June 22 date at The Mod Club. Either they’re grossly underestimating their draw (or I’m overestimating) or they want to create some serious demand for tickets.

MP3: Sloan – “Follow The Leader”

Also just announced – Yuck will warm up for their show at The Phoenix on May 1 with an in-store at Sonic Boom that afternoon at 5PM. Admission free, canned food donations encouraged.

MP3: Yuck – “Get Away”

Dum Dum Girls’ NXNE itinerary has been sorted out somewhat and it looks like a double-header – their booking agency notes that they’ll be playing both The El Mocambo and Lee’s Palace on June 17.

MP3: Dum Dum Girls – “Bhang Bhang I’m A Burnout”

Kurt Vile & The Violators return with Woods in tow for a show at Lee’s Palace on July 13.

MP3: Kurt Vile – “Jesus Fever”
MP3: Woods – “To Clean”

Their May 18 show at The Phoenix sold out pretty much immediately, Death Cab For Cutie have put together a Summer tour more in scale with their success – they’ll be at The Molson Amphitheatre on July 29 and accompanying them will be Frightened Rabbit. Death Cab’s new record Codes & Keys arrives May 31 and another song from it is streaming over at Soundcloud.

MP3: Frightened Rabbit – “Swim Until You Can’t See Land”
Video: Death Cab For Cutie – “You Are A Tourist”

Okkervil River will be webcasting a live performance of their new record I Am Very Far via NPR tonight at 7PM ET. The record is out May 10 and they play The Phoenix on June 12.

R.E.M. has put out a new video from Collapse Into Now.

Video: R.E.M. – “Every Day Is Yours To Win”

The Fly welcomes J Mascis to their courtyard for an acoustic video session.

Exclaim has an interview feature with Fleet Foxes and Spin an in-studio video. Helplessness Blues is out May 3 and they’re at Massey Hall on July 14.

JAM talks to Jamie Hince of The Kills. They’re at The Sound Academy on May 1.