This film was alright, for an Amer­i­can rom-com. It was like an Amer­i­can attempt at Amelie. Basi­cally, main­stream pro­duc­ers are finally acknowl­edg­ing that there is a big ‘indie’ mar­ket to cater to out there; a 17 — 30something demo­graphic that is too large to ignore and are no longer impressed with things that are not infused with the indie ethos / art­house feel. Greed­ily, though, the pro­duc­ers still wanted the film to be main­stream enough for every­one to watch, hence the debat­able cheese-factor of this film. Plot-wise it was like a super con­cen­trated, more real­is­tic ver­sion of He’s Just Not That Into You, where the female held the power in rela­tion­ships and the audi­ence were privy only to the thoughts and emo­tions of the male pro­tag­o­nist. It was another one of those, omg-so-love-isn’t-real(butitreallyis)!? films that I think are sup­posed to enlighten men and women across the world, giv­ing them mod­ern per­spec­tive on romance. Nev­er­the­less, Zooey Deschanel is gor­geous and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is super adorable. Those are rea­sons enough for me.

She & Him is a folk band formed by Deschanel in col­lab­o­ra­tion with M. Ward. For those of you who are already famil­iar with Deschanel’s charms on screen, expect just as much from her song writ­ing and singing in She & Him, com­ple­mented by M. Ward’s all encom­pass­ing greatness.

Django Django is a very, very new trio with only 3064 plays reg­is­tered on Last.fm the last time I checked. Their mis­chievi­ously fun and super catchy song Default has become a sta­ple addi­tion to my sum­mer­time playlist.

Braids is a Cana­dian exper­i­men­tal ensem­ble for­merly named The Neigh­bour­hood Coun­cil. My favourite track of theirs is Liver and Tan. It’s post-rock elec­tron­ica at its very best. If you like Explo­sions in the Sky, you will Love Braids. (PS — yet ANOTHER amaz­ing band with a token asian female mem­ber… what did I tell you?)

Wild Beasts are pure ear sex. Sorry, I can’t even describe with words how much I love this group. They played at Off­set fes­ti­val this week­end that just passed and I’m so gut­ted I missed them, I’m still mourn­ing. They put Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Mod­est Mouse (insert any other ‘good’ folk­tron­ica bands you know here) to utter shame, mak­ing you never want to lis­ten to them ever again because you’ve found some­thing way, way better.

Zola Jesus singer-songwriter Nika Roza Danilova is only a year younger than me, and that pisses me off so much. Because how can some­one that young be so amaz­ing? I loved her album, The Spoils, so much I actu­ally went on iTunes to buy the whole thing. Yes, me, the biggest free­loader ever. I don’t think I’ve ever bought and down­loaded a WHOLE album off iTunes since … oh my god, I think this may well be the very first time I’ve done that. She sounds like Yeah Yeah Yeahs on hal­lu­cino­gens, recorded on way less sophis­ti­cated equip­ment but sound­ing beyond bet­ter. Clay Bod­ies has already enjoyed mul­ti­ple replays in my playlist. Please get her album.

The xx are the epit­ome of dark, emo­tive pop. Pop that doesn’t even sound like pop. The kind of pop you could lis­ten to with­out get­ting has­sled by your extremely anti-pop, indie post-punk group of hyper-chic friends. You can actu­ally go to a social gath­er­ing and proudly say, hey guys, I’ve been lis­ten­ing to The xx, and expect warm pats of approval on your back.

MP3s (click on link to pre­view, right click save as to download)

1. She & Him — Why Do You Let Me Stay Here

2. Django Django — Default

3. Braids — Liver and Tan

4. Wild Beasts — Devil’s Crayon

5. Zola Jesus — Clay Bodies

6. The xx — Infinity

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