As bassist with one of the best indie guitar bands out there, Real Estate, Alex Bleeker should have plenty of opportunities to see his lightbulbs turn into winning tunes. Sometimes though it’s best to break away and plough your own furrow for a while. So rather than diluting what you can offer on the day job you come back even more inspired. Bleeker is starting to illustrate the chaotic beauty of his mind on ‘Don’t Look Down’, the primer from his upcoming LP ‘How Far Away’. The conceit may appear simplistic but Bleeker’s untamed vocals hint at the madness welling up inside. This is a deliciously off centre composition for when dusk reigns. KD

Alex Bleeker And The Freaks – Don’t Look Down

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Buy Songs: Alex Bleeker And The Freaks
Year: 2013

Nashville’s Terry Price has been around the block once or twice (with his old band Oblio) and has suffered quite a few slings and arrows lately. Like most people he struggled on but instead of hiding behind a cloak of ordinariness he has gone out and recorded one of the most heartfelt indie guitar albums of the year in ‘How To Say Goodbye’. On ‘Someplace’ he channels the ghost of early Teenage Fanclub with suitably jangly results. Despite the outwardly sunny disposition there is a giant tear about to reveal itself at some point during this gorgeous song. Keep at it Terry, you are going to cheer up plenty of people this year – your bank manager included (with a bit of luck). KD

Photo Ops – Someplace

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Buy Songs: Photo Ops
Year: 2013

Harper Simon’s new LP is called ‘Division Street’ and for a minute I thought I’d spotted the primary influence in it’s naming. With receding braincells but a sprightly search engine technique I was soon to discover that Elliott Smith’s song was actually called ‘Division Day’, wherein the whole trust of this piece lost its mojo. Doesn’t take anything away from this number however, from an artist who has somehow escaped the eternal comparison to his famous father’s work. Perhaps this is because he has struck out on his own and each time alchemy has more or less ensued. ‘Bonnie Brae’ is a song with a real chorus and bridge, each possessing moments of significant clarity and true melody. A shadow well and truly sidestepped then. KD

Harper Simon – Bonnie Brae

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Buy Songs: Harper Simon
Year: 2013

Harper Simon: Bonnie Brae on Nowness.com

When it comes to listening to digital music iTunes remains the dominant player, not because it offers a particularly brilliant service (it offers a particularly poor one in my book) but because the proprietary obsessed Apple are behind it and the general public’s love-in with the company’s products seems impervious to criticism. In the download market Amazon, eMusic and a few other smaller players take up the slack, if we conveniently ignore by far the biggest supplier of music downloads.

But for all that the days where you feel you must own your music collection might be coming to an end. Granted vinyl is making a comeback but that is in the main because it is working off a very low base. CD sales are on a download spiral and if you believe the prophets of doom within the music industry download files could be about to follow them. The humble mp3’s grim reaper appears to be the streaming services, new ones of which are popping up daily.

The concept of streaming makes a great case for the future. Why bother spending years clogging up your hard drive when there is services out there that have seamlessly clogged up their own servers with a thousand times the amount you could possibly amass. And it’s all there ready for you to listen to, on any device that can be connected to the internet. With a little careful investigation (Spotify is our choice) you can listen to as much music as you want for free once you are prepared to put up with the odd advert. With broadband and Wi-Fi connections now reaching into every facet of where we conduct life it seems that streaming’s biggest drawback will soon not be a consideration at all.

Two new players in the streaming music market might even have found a new direction in this ever evolving strand of the music industry. Both Cred.fm and Yuleplay build their near all-encompassing list of streaming tunes from the riches that youtube has to offer. They create an embedded world of video but one that is sophistically pruned by the admin people and users of the site. While Yuleplay is entirely concerned with Christmas music Cred.fm is branding itself as being all things to all people. Both sides have the playlist at the kernel of their mission statement and both can offer both video and streaming, which is something that Spotify, Pandora, Deezer et al cannot match. Both Yuleplay and Cred.fm are free in terms of use and adverts and while Cred.fm still looks a tad beta Yuleplay appears to be mostly there in accommodating your every music need this Christmas and every one after that. KD

Burning Codes – Streaming

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Buy Songs: Burning Codes
Year: 2010

I’ve taken this line directly from the Books record label Temporary Residence ‘the deluxe 2xLP format comes packaged with 36 full-color die-cut stickers for you to design and decorate your own unique record cover’. Says it all really, a band (duo Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong) not content to sit on their behinds and serve up something stale or rehashed or someone else’s work in new clothes. They’ve subsequently broken up since this song was released in 2010 as part of LP ‘The Way Out’ so it seems that their innovation was only good enough for universal critical acclaim but the buying public just did not climb aboard in significant numbers. They could be impenetrable at times which probably didn’t help their cause but when they hit their stride on tracks like ‘Beautiful People’ their brand of innovation was capable of rhapsody. KD

The Books – Beautiful People

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Buy Songs: The Books
Year: 2010

Partly chosen because summer has become somewhat of a dream of late, especially in light of the hailstone showers earlier. Mostly chosen though for being a jangling spectrum, the sort of sound that could well initiate far too many straw laden sweet fruit containing imbibements as the sun goes down on another blissful day. Johnny Mackay runs the show on a day trip away from his Melbourne band Children Collide. Fascinator has seen him climb through the ranks to Lord and such is the prestige that that status has accorded him he promptly decamped to Manhattan and the surrounding hinterland, which he probably now considers his tiny kingdom. KD

Fascinator – Summer Dream

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Buy Songs: Fascinator
Year: 2012

A bit like the Go! Team if they were slowed down and put back together with the misfiring parts given a brand new role ‘Sound of Screams’ still manages to sound bigger than the work of just 2 people. Marcus Pepperell and John Hamson Jr. are the twin invigorators and with a sack full of tour dates to get through this summer they may well have made a name for themselves by year’s end. They certainly have an impressive sound, a big canvass that is just 5 degrees off-kilter, enough to give tracks like ‘Sound of Screams’ an identity of their own. You could do worse than celebrate the release of Thumpers ‘Unkinder (A Tougher Love)’ EP next month by breaking out the punch bowl. KD

Thumpers – Sound of Screams

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Buy Songs: Thumpers
Year: 2013

Not sure what stopped me from destroying this mp3 because on initial inspection it had a tad too much cheese to go the distance. Putting it aside I then returned a number of times and on each occasion a little more of the tune velcroed. Now I’m thinking it could nestle quite comfortably in a playlist to kickstart the summer, just before Slow Magic’s ‘Corvette Cassette’ takes over or Friendly Fire’s ‘Jump In The Pool’ brings proceedings to the next level. Andreas Szego is behind the AfterParty project and he is making a grand statement before middle age finally consumes him under a pile of dirty nappies and unpaid bills. ‘Jungle Dreams’ flicks through the back catalogue of a number of 1980’s luminaries (Erasure for one) before racing back to the future to join modern contemporaries like the Tough Alliance. This could well stick in your head like the snaking advances of a tongue from a 3am disco admirer. KD

AfterParty – Jungle Dreams

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Buy Songs: Afterparty
Year: 2013

If this indie life hadn’t got me so young I would most probably have taken to setting up the very first Calypso music blog. I don’t think there is another genre that fuels a happier disposition. My infatuation was sparked by a not for profit record label called Smithsonian Folkways who in 2000 put out a lost classic called ‘Calypso Awakening’ containing a collection of some of the best that Trinidad and Tobago had to offer. Lord Melody and the Mighty Sparrow et al might not mean an awful to you but give this album a whirl and they’ll be with you forever. Here is Steel Band Procession with an out of control version of ’Yankee’s Gone’. Smiles all around then except for those with a face like a crocodile. KD

Steel Band Procession – Yankees Gone

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Buy Songs: Smithsonian Folkways
Year: 1950′s/2000

Much like the gulf stream this track by Oakland band Foxtails Brigade warms up the atmosphere to a rather pleasing degree. Much hinges on Laura Weinbach’s slowly delivered, lazer guided, crystal cut vocals but there is dreamy atmospherics’ aplenty on the lush instrumentation. ‘The Unloved’ is taken from last year’s ‘Time Is Passed’ and if that is not enough to love them you should check out their winning assortment of Christmas songs and free new single called ‘Little Person’. KD

Foxtails Brigade – The Unloved

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Buy Songs: Foxtails Brigade
Year: 2012

Spotlight Kid take from one of the best shoegaze acts that ever was (we’re talking Swervedriver) which makes what they do all the more palatable because without that it could be a mere token reprisal rather a voyage into new territory. The similarities are most prevalent in the guitars which are tuned to within an inch of Adam Franklin’s seminal guitar noise. But SK’s frantic scuzz does have a life of its own, there are living breathing personalities present meaning there is much to admire for those familiar with shoegaze part 1 and those who are not. The band have just put out a new single called ‘Budge Up’ but this is taken from an earlier one back in 2011. All put out on ye old vinyl, the media of choice both then and now. KD

Spotlight Kid – April

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Buy Songs: Spotlight Kid
Year: 2011

Were it not for the enthusiasm and graft of the Jeffrey siblings this Sydney band would never have stood a chance. I can see them now, neighbours banging down the walls as the two (and assorted comrades) strip the paint off their side. It is a story that plays out all over the world and for many it leads to an inevitable ‘let’s put it down to a rite of passage’. The Jeffrey’s are pluggers though which can turn into a life of half interested listeners or in their case an emergence of a sound, utterly retro though it is, that could well become seriously noteworthy. ‘When I’m Dead’ is the first tune to emerge from their debut album and it is a whirlwind of intent. The Strokes may or not be intended (they appear to have designs on the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s title) but that is what it ended up sounding like. We’ll be keeping an eye out for their next move. KD

The Dead Heads – When I’m Dead

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Buy Songs: The Dead Heads
Year: 2013