If you like everything, there's nothing left to love!

They like to rest on windowsills

So, it's been quite a while in the making, but it's finally 100% done and you can finally order one! The compilation was a great joy to put together and finish and I only hope you'll love it as much as I do. As I've noted before, they come in a beautiful handmade sleeves – screenprinted in a lovely blue ink on nice, thick white stock! Oh, and hand-stamped discs, too! But the music is just as good as the sleeve it's in! New or previously unreleased songs (mostly) from 13 fantastic bands from all around the world! Plus the shameless inclusion of a track from my band The Sugarplums! Ha ha. I'm very proud of this compilation and I'm very happy to say that you can finally order yours today for USD $8 PPD no matter where you happen to live! It's limited to a small run of only 150 copies and I won't be making anymore, so hurry scurry! Orders will begin shipping out February 14.

UPDATE! The compilation SOLD OUT!

TRACKLIST:
01. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart :: I Wanna Go All The Way
02. Sarah Plain & Tall :: If Tomorrow
03. The Foxgloves :: Passing Through
04. Knight School :: Death And The Cleaning Maiden
05. The Garlands :: Chandeliers
06. The Sugarplums :: A Pop Wedding In The Winter Weather
07. Brown Recluse Sings :: Night Train
08. Pants Yell! :: Cold Hands, You Make Me Nervous
09. The Winter Club :: The Big Trip
10. The Airfields :: Home Is Always An Imaginary Place
11. The Up Set :: Couldn't Lose Our Youth
12. Horowitz :: Chilwell Olympia
13. The Parallelograms :: Papageno
14. Signed Papercuts :: An Old Memory

Finally, a tremendous thank you to all the bands involved because without you this compilation would certainly not exist!

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Indiepopedia!!

Since Wikipedia tends to deem the depths indiepop not important enough to exist, it's a good thing we've recently taken up our own land! Enter Indiepopedia! Though still in it's early stages, it's on it's way to becoming an incredible and everlasting resource to the International Pop Underground! But! It won't go anywhere without your help – it is a wiki, and that means that YOU need to help build it! So, PLEASE head over and check it out, and PLEASE feel inclined to add and edit anything that you think should be there!!! Everyone's counting on everyone, so let's make this a great thing!

Also, please feel free to join in the discussion over at Anorak! :)

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Our Favorite Free Cloudberry MPthrees!

Check below for contest details!

As I think I've said on several occasions here, Cloudberry Records has been the biggest, strongest, and most consistant driving force for indiepop this year. What Roque did with Cloudberry was just unbelievable – over 70 singles in one year! – it's just amazing. Myself and Tom over at IndieMP3 decided to get together and make a toast to Cloudberry for everything they did this year, and to hope it only continues to get better and better in 2008!

As anyone who's visited the Cloudberry website would know, Roque's got an MP3 from every single release up for download. That means there's over 70 MP3s to listen to on that website – an indiepop dreamland! We decided we would each choose our 10 favorite and compile them into two volumes of what we consider to be the very best of Cloudberry Records. My 10 (Volume One) features some of the best pop songs of the year, with a little fuzz and distortion thrown in for good measure. Tom's picks (Volume Two) can downloaded over at IndieMP3.

BUT WAIT! Before I get to my picks – we decided, hey what's an end of the year toast without some prizes?! So, we've got a bit of a contest to go along with the posts. We will be giving away a total of FIVE copies of the Nothing Matters When We're Dancing EP (Cloud502), which will be available only at a few Pop Nights in the UK and Sweden. So, dear readers from the U.S., this might be your only chance to get a copy! Just leave a comment on this post with your name, email, and maybe your 10 favorite Cloudberry songs if you'd like, and you will be entered into the random drawing! I will be choosing THREE winners from Skatterbrain and Tom will be choosing TWO over at IndieMP3, so leave a comment here and there to increase yor chances! The contest will close on January 4th, so get entering!

Okay, so I must admit, I cheated a bit on my picks; Oh! Custer's "Your Name" and Slow Down Tallahassee's "U R Grace U R" weren't the free ones on the site, but I just HAD TO include them, they were two of my very favorite songs of the year! Okay, so anyway, these are my picks, I hope you enjoy!

Tracklist and Links:
01. Oh! Custer :: Your Name (from Cloud009)
02. Slow Down Tallahassee :: U R Grace U R (from Cloud010)
03. The Airfields :: Yr So Wonderful (from Cloud047)
04. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart :: Orchard of My Eye (from Cloud013)
05. Signed Papercuts :: Only Fools Rush In (from Cloud027)
06. Blind Terry :: The Subtle Art of How to Break A Heart (from Cloud058)
07. The Deirdres :: Hopeless Is The Venue (from Cloud055)
08. Stars In Coma :: Revanche (from Cloud008)
09. Strawberry Story :: Boys (From the Story) (from Cloud065)
10. The Manhattan Love Suicides :: Last Stand (from Cloud062)

DOWNLOAD IT! (.ZIP, 10 MP3s with cover art, 31mb)

Well, I think that's it. It's truly been an incredible year – for indiepop and otherwise – and 2008 seems to be looking even brighter! Happy New Year, everybody!!!

Also, Lost Music, the gig promotion partner of indie mp3 will be putting on a Cloudberry Records gig on at the end of February 2008. Confirmed to date are Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Strawberry Story, Manhattan Love Suicides and one more to be confirmed. DJ's will be spinning Cloudberry releases only. More details will be posted once the line up is confirmed.

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A Mix for Sea Otters to Listen to With Their Ears

A Mix for Sea Otters to Listen to With Their Ears

It's no secret that I love making mixes, so today I decided to make a new one. CLEARLY, it's a mix for sea otters to listen to with their ears, but it's mostly just twelve songs of mostly noisy indiepop bridging nearly two decades from 1983 (Twa Toots) to 2001 (The Aislers Set). I think it's a real great mix, though, and I'm pretty sure of it, as I always feel the need to listen to the mixes I make all the way through at least five times before I post them. That could have been a run-on sentence, it's kind of hard to say. Well I guess that's about as much intro as you need... the music pretty much speaks for itself. So go listen to it with your ears! As always, the mix are tagged as a compilation, with artwork and proper track order, so it should be pretty easy for you to handle.

[ZIP]: A Mix for Sea Otters to Listen to With Their Ears (12 MP3s, 32mb)

Tracklist:
01 My Bloody Valentine :: Sylvie's Head
02 Black Tambourine :: For Ex-Lovers Only
03 McCarthy :: We Are All Bourgeois Now
04 The Siddeleys :: Bedlam on the Mezzanine
05 Pastel Collision :: Like Water
06 The Pooh Sticks :: Indiepop Ain't Noise Pollution
07 The Flatmates :: Shimmer
08 Television Personalities :: This Time There's No Happy Ending
09 Henry's Dress :: Target Practice
10 The Aislers Set :: The Red Door
11 Twa Toots :: Please Don't Play 'A Rainy Night in Georgia'
12 Even As We Speak :: 100

Related:
Skatterbrain's Lazy Springmix

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