"Nordic Laurel", Baths

Coming out of Los Angeles, Will Wiesenfeld, aka Baths, composes lush beatscapes littered with boom bap drums, organic samples, and high pitched vocals to create something in between pop and glitch hop. He dropped one of my favorite albums of the summer, the album Cerulean.

Baths - Nordic Laurel by Hypetrak

"Bombay", El Guincho

Spanish musician Pablo Díaz-Reixa, who goes by the moniker El Guincho, crafts a steel drum driven, bass drum bangin', rump shakin' jam that fits somewhere in between funk, tropicalia, and dance music. See him in MTL on September 29 at the Belmont.
El Guincho - Bombay by Ragged Words

"Real Love", Delorean

The talented Spaniards tactfully meld house synths with pop sensibilities. If you caught Delorean in Montreal, you got to see that they truly love their art. If you missed them, then you can catch them November 19 at the Belmont.
Delorean- Real Love by matadorrecs

"Photojournalist", Small Black

Small Black, formerly Washed Out's backing band on tour, will be playing the November 19 show with Delorean at the Belmont. The drums that drop in the chorus cripple me.
Small Black- "Photojournalist" by Marco Collins

"Baby (El-P Death Mix)", Justin Bieber

"Sometimes we do have to cry over Justin Bieber"- Jimmy Kimmel. El-P mixes Paul McCartney/Wings' "Live and Let Die" with Bieber to give us an excuse to listen to the Canadian boy wonder.
Justin Bieber - Baby (El-P Death Remix) by Crossfire Music

"Wet Hair (Japandroids Cover)", Teen Daze

Coming out of Vancouver, Teen Daze have been churning out many a blogworthy hit this summer. They've been producing remixes for bands like Yeasayer, Local Natives, and Young Liars, as well as creating their own songs.
Teen Daze - Wet Hair (Japandroids Cover) by Hypetrak

"Precious Necklace (Cherry Chapstick RMX)", Silly Kissers

Cherry Chapstick produce a disco-house remix of Silly Kissers' "Precious Necklace" to keep heads bobbing. Don't miss Montreal's own Silly Kissers playing the Arbutus Records Showcase on October 1 at Rialto Theater.
Silly Kissers - Precious Necklace (Cherry Chapstick RMX) by Silly Kissers

"Don't Turn The Lights On (Aeroplane Remix)", Chromeo

Montreal's foremost purveyors of dance music, Chromeo, have got another album coming out, called Business Casual. If "Night By Night" and "Don't Turn the Lights On" are any indication, this album is sure to be a highlight of the year. Aeroplane give the first single the remix treatment, adding more of a extra disco feel.

Chromeo - Don't Turn The Lights On (Aeroplane Remix) by Chromeo

"Tomboy", Panda Bear

Animal Collective's Noah Lennox, AKA Panda Bear, will be dropping his album Tomboy on Paw Tracks in September. Be sure to check out the tripped out visual album, ODDSAC, by Danny Perez and Animal Collective. After hearing this track, I'm confident this album will not disappoint.
Panda Bear - Tomboy by newtigerhearts

"Spanish Sahara (Mount Kimbie Remix)", Foals

Mount Kimbie, hailing from London, remix this track off of Foals' most recent LP Total Life Forever. The duo add a nice slightly tribal feel to the song to make a relaxing track. Catch Mount Kimbie October 2 at the Belmont.
Foals - Spanish Sahara (Mount Kimbie Remix) by fabric

"ACheerleader", Bikini

Last,  but certainly not least, the duo behind Bikini, Nigel Diamond and Olivier Bonnard, are on our watch list; not just because its Bikini season, but because the dudes know how to make some seriously catchy music. Bikini - ACheerlaeder by KeeganDotCom

P.S.  If you have not yet picked up your copy of Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, do that. Now.

LOOKOUT: For those who don’t know, can you tell us a little bit about your record collective Sixteen Sixteen?

Mark Sandford: Basically, when we started Fluxus, we needed a place to put our music. You know how every single person and every single band has a MySpace? Typically, it’s like “Oh, go check out my MySpace.” That doesn’t carry any weight anymore. So, we thought why not build our own little website and put all our music and our friends' music up there. Myself, Chris Ploss, and Scott Nelson started the website. Scott, who’s a computer science major, built the most insane website and application to stream music. It ended up being a warehouse for our music. So we could record something and then send it out on the internet. We were recording other bands here at our apartment, and it was like, “Hey, why don’t you put this stuff on the website?”

I noticed a distinct change in sound from Cargoes of Empire to Navy Blue. How did that musical change in Fluxus end up happening?

When we recorded Cargoes of Empire, we had a different group of people than we do now. Fluxus itself was a project between Chris and I and so it was whatever we were working on at the time. When we recorded Cargoes of Empire, there were six of us. When you have six people in a band, it seems like the biggest group of people ever…  Just so many people in a band. We have five people in the band now and it seems so much lighter. I don’t know what one person changes, but it made a big difference in sound. The sound that you hear on Cargoes of Empire came out of the people that were working in the band and these people moved away and moved to different projects. Chris and I wanted to make what we really liked: dance groove, dance music. We got two new members and they were totally down with that and it started taking shape from there. We’ve taken some of our Cargoes of Empire songs and made some of our own remixes, kind of in the vain of Duran Duran or Soulwax. So, it's like a weird evolution and it seems like a right fit.

What do you think is special about Montreal in terms of making music and playing shows?

Montreal is such a creative place and people who are creative here are very serious about their creativity and that’s a really excellent environment to be in. Montreal’s not a big city and that’s what makes it good because we hang out with people that are in so many incredible bands and they’re just our friends. It’s such a rich network of people. I can’t speak for other people in other cities, but the creative network is so big within a small city and that’s really powerful because you can go to a show and chances are, a lot of people in the crowd are friends of the people up there, which is really encouraging and special.

Have you ever been playing a show and everyone’s standing around no one’s really dancing? What do you do? How do you keep the energy up?

That’s one of the reasons I wanted to make dance music. In Montreal, we did a show at this really weird venue, it was packed but everyone was sitting at tables. So we played forty-five minutes of nonstop dance music, and people really enjoyed it, but in a weird way, in a “I’m-gonna-sit-here-with-my-beer-way.” That’s a challenge for me, like how will I make people start feeling what life is?

We’ve talked about this as a band. If we’re going to play dance music, music that is somewhat repetitive and upbeat, it’s our job to look enthused or at least pretend that we’re into it. That’s what you have to do. Montreal’s kind of a weird city for that, maybe it’s part of the European thing. I lived in Detroit for a while and people go crazy. It could be a folk song and it’s like a rave.

What’s next for Fluxus?

We’re taking a little break right now. The next thing that’s up for us is that we’re possibly shooting a music video. We’re trying to secure money for that, which is, you know, kind of difficult. Les Appendices, a franco-comedy show, were at one of our shows and dug what we were doing and we’ve been in a conversation with them about shooting a music video. We’re all waiting on government funding.