Of Monsters and Men have released a great new video for the track Little Talks. Five sailors find a mythical female creature. Pretty straightforward…

WeWereMonkeys : Of Monsters and Men – Little Talks from WeWereMonkeys on Vimeo.

Staying with the animation angle, here’s a clip from Sigur Ros singer Jonsí, from the We Bought a Zoo soundtrack…

Jónsi – Gathering Stories (From We Bought A Zoo) from Jónsi on Vimeo.

In the clip for Cheerleader, St. Vincent gets the Gulliver’s Travels treatment – or maybe more of Attack of the 50-Foot Woman…

St. Vincent “Cheerleader” from Hiro Murai on Vimeo.

Adele will be on 60 Minutes this week in advance of her Grammy Awards appearance later that evening. Here’s a short teaser…

Feist: The Pantsuit Days

Nova Scotia’s Leslie Feist won the hearts of AAA with her second album Let it Die and the track Mushaboom.

But it was the homespun video for 1234 that broke her nationwide, thanks to Apple. As lo-fi as that clip was, the new mini-movie for The Bad in Each Other is at the other end of the spectrum.

With the new album having scanned more than 120,000 units and Bad having just debuted in the Public Radio Top 22, Feist appears set for a strong year. KBCO, WXRV, KCMP, and WFUV are just some of the stations on board.

Check out the clip, a performance for the excellent Black Cab Sessions, and tour dates below…

And here’s a performance from the UK’s Black Cab Sessions…

Feist from Black Cab Sessions on Vimeo.

Feist has announced the first leg of her upcoming tour…

April 14th Indio, CA @ Coachella
April 21st Indio, CA @ Coachella
April 22nd Phoenix, AZ @ Orpheum Theatre
April 26th Austin, TX @ Stubb’s: Outdoors
April 28th New Orleans, LA @ New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
April 30th Indianapolis, IN @ Egyptian Room @ Old National Centre
May 1st Nashville, TN @ The Ryman Auditorium
May 2nd Asheville, NC @ Thomas Wolfe Auditorium
May 3rd Raleigh, NC @ Memorial Auditorium
May 5th New York, NY @ Radio City Music Hall
May 7th Boston, MA @ House Of Blues
May 8th Philadelphia, PA @ Academy Of Music
May 9th Washington, DC @ The Strathmore
May 11th Burlington, VT @ The Flynn Theater

Jane’s Addiction returned in October with The Great Escape Artist, and the track Underground felt like it had huge potential. Now there’s a sepia tone video that offers plenty to look at…

Kate Bush continues to impress with her 50 Words for Snow album, and this inventive clip for Eider Falls at Lake Tahoe continues the compelling story…

Wilco has released their second video for The Whole Love, this time an amazing animation for Dawned on Me featuring the characters from Popeye…

Orbo and the Longshots

Orbo and the Longshots sound like they grew up next door to John Mellencamp. But you’ll likely do a double-take when you find out they’re actually from Bergen, Norway.

Ole Reinert Berg-Olsen (Orbo) put the band together in 2000, and they’ve gone from a Rolling Stones cover band to developing a straight-ahead Americana sound.

For their fifth CD, Prairie Sun, the band traveled to Prairie Sun studios in Sonoma County, California, enlisting engineering and production help from Grammy nominated Erick Jaskowiak (Alison Krauss, Trisha Yearwood, Catie Curtis, Shooter Jennings, Colin Hay).

Winners of the Norwegian Grammy equivalent, the band hopes to make more friends stateside this year with a handful of dates starting on February 29 in Nashville.

Prairie Sun arrives January 31.

Check out this clip in the studio, cutting High Grass Dog…

And a performance video of Highway Tears…

The first track from Prairie Sun to radio is Magic…

Orbo and the Longshots – Magic (radio edit) by TheTop22

Upcoming dates:

29.02.2012     US 2012    Exit/In    Nashville, TN (US)
01.03.2012     US 2012    The EARL    East Atlanta, GA (US)
02.03.2012     US 2012    Local 506    Chapel Hill, NC (US)
03.03.2012     US 2012    Red Palace    Washington, DC (US)
04.03.2012     US 2012    Johnny Brenda’s    Philadelphia, PA (US)
05.03.2012     US 2012    Mercury Lounge    New York, NY (US)

Learn more at Orbo.no

Artist Spotlight is sponsored content in association with A Taste of Triple A.

What to do if you’re Ingrid Michaelson.

The super-clever-funny girl that the AAA and Hot AC radio formats have come to know and love seems at a crossroads.

Known for simple, often ukelele-driven pop songs with BIG hooks, Michaelson’s fanbase should be much bigger than the boutique that is adult rock.

Throw in the risk that, if she were to remain that ukelele playing prankster, she might well get lost among the growing crowd of sound-a-likes that has cropped up in her wake.

And heck, maybe as an artist she just wanted try something different — such as replacing a bit of clever with a bit of deeper. With Human Again, she may have been in no mood to make another version of the first four albums. And that’s laudable.

In hiring veteran producer David Kahne (Paul McCartney, Shawn Colvin, Regina Spektor, Lana Del Rey) over previous partner Dan Romer, the die was cast.

Unfortunately, Kahne did not seem to have a game plan beyond making sure it didn’t sound like an Ingrid Michaelson album. When compared to her light-tight-and-bright previous work, Human Again largely comes off as over-produced, with everything from bombastic electronic drum kits to an overabundance of strings that, at times, literally overpower Michaelson’s fantastic voice. At other times, such as on the track I’m Through, the strings and vocal reverb take her dangerously close to a Broadway show tunes production value.

Yet there are standouts. Among them is Ribbons, which finally gives us a taste of the clever that we’ve come to expect from Michaelson. The song is thisclose to perfection, but again Kahne can’t resist a soaring chorus that feels mismatched with the rest of the song.

Another strong track is the lead single at radio, Ghost. Ghost may take a few spins before the stealthy hooks emerge. But once they do, the song is hard to get out of your head.

Looking very forward to seeing Ingrid play these songs live. Her tour starts April 9 in Montreal.

Alabama Shakes

Houston, we have a buzz band. Discovered by Patterson Hood of Drive By Truckers, Alabama Shakes has so much of the hype machine now running behind them, it threatens to actually run them over. Which would be a shame, because there’s definitely something here. We love this kind of record because it makes hypocrites out of radio guys who otherwise refuse to play the blues. Somehow they’ll argue this is something completely unrelated.

The band is from Athens, Alabama, and they used to just be called “The Shakes.”

Brittany Howard is the lead, and it’s coming out on ATO through RED. Check the lo-fi video performance for “Hold On.”

Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi, Featuring Jack White

In a better-late-than-never clip, this minor public radio hit now has an amazing animated video to accompany Two Against One…

MGMT

While we’re on the animation trip, here’s a different style, but equally compelling clip for MGMT’s All We Ever Wanted…

MGMT – All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

Ingrid Michaelson

This has been around a while, but in case you missed it, in a collage of stills, Michaelson and collaborator Deborah Lopez create a lyric video. Michaelson displays a beautiful pair of glasses, but also commits a classic no-no and turns her back to the camera.

Ghost sounds like a significant departure for the AAA fave…

Back in 2004, Cincinnati’s Heartless Bastards got a break from fellow Ohio rising star Patrick Carney from The Black Keys.

Carney delivered a demo tape of the Bastards to the folks at the Keys’ label Fat Possum Records. And off they went.

Now signed to Brooklyn’s Partisan Records, Heartless Bastards are about to release album #4 — called Arrow — produced by Spoon drummer Jim Eno at his home studio in Austin.

The first single, Parted Ways had a strong week at Public Radio this week, debuting in The Top 22.

Get a feel for the band as they perform Parted Ways for Austin blog Do512…

And here’s the studio version…

Heartless Bastards – Parted Ways

Paul Weller has a big year ahead of him. Not only will he and his wife have twins in early 2012, but he’ll drop a new CD called Sonik Kicks. The disc features at least one guest appearance from Noel Gallagher.

He’s released a song and video, and if Around the Lake is an indicator, it’s a departure for Weller, who  appears to be channeling his inner Bowie…

Bon Iver's Justin Vernon

There are a number of things we learn from this next video:

1) Justin Vernon has a pretty good fadeaway jumper.

2) Justin Vernon has/had sciatica.

3) The band kills time with light workouts.

Beyond that, we’re not exactly sure what to make of this video…

On the road DVD Trailer from Rogcity Fitness on Vimeo.

The Rodney Dangerfield of late night television

Jimmy Kimmel gets no respect.

He gets decent ratings, and has grown his audience this year. Maybe he’s just on too late for most people.

One of the many great things he’s got going is the recurring bit with artists playing his outdoor stage. The bookings are solid and it makes for a better live concert experience.

This week he had Death Cab for Cutie.

Enjoy You Are a Tourist…

And Underneath the Sycamore…

Ray Manzarek and guitarist Roy Rogers interviewed for our sister site TheBluesMobile.com

Legendary Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek has teamed with bluesman/producer Roy Rogers for a new CD called Translucent Blues.

Manzarek’s resume is well known, but less so is that of Rogers — a critics darling on the blues circuit as a singer, songwriter, and slide guitarist. Rogers also has a stellar reputation as a producer, having revived the career of John Lee Hooker with the album The Healer in 1989.

In our conversation, taped for our sister site TheBluesMobile.com, the two talked not only about the album, which features lyrical contributions from Jim Carroll and Warren Zevon, among others.

Ray also talked about how he came to the blues, as well as the two conversing about Doors guitarist Robby Krieger — and Robby’s surprising first songwriting contribution…

We had cameras rolling.

On Translucent Blues…

On Robby Krieger’s first songwriting contribution to the Doors…

They did not blow much shit up in Moneyball.

The Year in Film

Let’s start with the coolest clip this week, a film called The 2011 Portfolio.

It’s a mashup of 166 films that came out in 2011, and it’s really well done. First watch, then we’ll discuss…

Cool, right? But here’s where we get disturbed by what we see:

1) A lot of these movies look like the same movie.
2) Violence, lots. Blowing shit up is just boring. Did Hitchcock need to blow up that much shit? Thought not.
3) I think I counted more blue people than black people. Seriously, there are four blue characters and I think I only saw two black actors, not counting Harold and Kumar, who are, of course, not black. WTF Hollywood? What country do you live in?

Tom Waits Satisfied

What happens when Bob Dylan’s kid shoots a video for Tom Waits? This does. Jesse Dylan directs…

The Black Keys

The Black Keys were all over TV this past weekend, and despite our tease for the SNL performance, they were better on Colbert as SNL continues to lag behind just about everybody in the live mix department…

Lonely Boy performance…

Gold on the Ceiling performance (web only)…