Video Round-Up: Handle With Care Edition

Video Round-Up is a weekly post collecting an assortment of videos from around the web. Whether they be music videos, creative viral marketing, just plain cool, or just plain ridiculous, they will all be found on Video Round-Up.

It isn't that I like bands who are more underground than others. It isn't that I want limited financial success for artists I enjoy. It's about jocking, a term I learned recently that describes the overwhelming hype that, if put in the hands of certain people--and the higher that number of certain people, the higher the chance of jocking--can be shoved in my face. Or yours. I want to enjoy my music in peace. If I hear a Katy Perry song on the radio and like it, I have to accept that she is hyper famous and that I must enjoy that song with everyone who has cable and listens to Top 40 even a little bit. She is the New York City to Buke and Gass' Athens, Georgia: one huge, one small. So, with my admonition that you enjoy this music at your own pace, or hate it completely (either option is fine by me), here are some songs from last year that I like very much.

Buke and Gass are a two-person team, Arone and Aron, who play a modified baritone ukulele and a built-from-scratch guitar-bass hybrid, respectively. Each also plays a bit of percussion, which is an element this band could not do without. Their songwriting is so fresh to me because while their instruments suggest an indie bohemian quality (which they may very well have), the music is gritty, loud, and syncopated to the moon and back. Their album, Riposte, is full of energy, and a super duper purchase.

I ignored the Local Natives until I saw this song performed on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last week. Not only is the studio version excellent, but the live performance featured several percussion breaks, where the drummer keeps hitting his drums while the lead singer turns to his own tom and starts wailing. I'm a sucker for this kind of physical energy at a live show, where musicians and fans feel so intensely that the song shouldn't end, so they return to musical roots and just beat on shit for minutes. However, I don't know much about this band. Yet I do really like this song.

I learned about Sleigh Bells' debut album, Treats, through all the attention it got on NPR's music website. (By the way, I know I've already gone against what I said above: these artists are featured by a national news site, or perform on broadcast television. The artist below is the most famous of all. Still, these aren't bands you typically overhear passersby talking about.) The loudness that Buke and Gass create with live instruments can be similarly seen here, only much louder, and with the help of computers. Sleigh Bells combine drums and guitar that are clearly a fraction of a decibel away from destroying your speakers with the relaxed, feminine voice of their singer. The combination works, and I can't stop dancing to songs like this one.

I've been a big fan of Sufjan Stevens since Illinois, but I've never heard an album like his newest, The Age of Adz--from him or anyone else. It's incredible. "Too Much" features the album's regular features: vocal harmonies, electronic bleeps, and hyperactive lunatic percussion. Fantastic.