Straight out of Oxford, Mississippi (nope, not a clue. You?), ILLLS are to release their debut EP, Dark Paradise, on London label The Sound of Sweet Nothing.  Have a watch of the video here.

The band set about recording music over the space of about a year, which eventually turned into this. On recording the band have said “We didn’t know what we were doing, but this is what we made. We play live now and will be this Spring after we release this EP that’s taken so long to create.”

Speaking of the video this is what they had to say: “It was shot in our home town of Oxford, MS.  We rented a camera from the local university and got two of our friends (who have never really worked in film before) to just help us shoot an idea we had.  For the other parts of the video, we really did just walk through a grocery store, bought a bunch of nasty food, cooked it all together and ate it.  There should probably be more of the aftermath of us eating the food in the video because we were gagging and throwing up for about 30 minutes afterwards.  It was disgusting.”  

Blood Orange, aka Dev Hynes, aka Lightspeed Champion, has unveiled the new video for his single ‘Champagen Coast’. Have a watch of it here:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO6y1-erVEw&w=560&h=315]

The video was directed by Haley Wollens, and features an assortment of girls doing odd dancing in odd rooms, while Dev Hynes stands idly by. Awkward. Here’s what Dev said recently about it to The New York Times: “The song, as with every other piece of music I seem to make, is mostly about longing, creating scenarios in regards to an unrequited lover, plans that will never see fruition.  So you’re left alone in your digitally created interior to dance by yourself”.

Currently Dev is supporting Florence And The Machine on her tours of the US & Australia but we can reveal that he has been added to the line up for this year’s Field Day Festival taking place in London’s Victoria Park on 2nd June.

Moltov Jukebox consider themselves to be “London’s wildest troop of nomadic party-starters” and on listening to their rather fine EP ‘Bang’ I’m not about to argue with them. Let me introduce you. You’ll know singer Natalia Tena as Ellie in ‘About a Boy’.

The ‘Bang’ EP is the follow up to their debut ‘Double Dare’ EP, released to great acclaim in 2011, and was recorded Jonathan Quarmby, who has previously worked with David Bowie. How to descibe the sound? It’s a haze of strings and strums, brass and beats with some accordion and vocals thrown over the top. It’s a genre-hopping exercise in musical mayhem. Ska, soul, reggae, blues, pop, latin, soul and a bit of a calypso. Enough?

This is a great record. It’s easy to dismiss it as a record for a bacardi advert (as I did on first listen) but it’s better than that. The summery vibes run through this release but it combines the light with the dark. It’s unmistakably a record to put on at a party though. Put it on, pour some rum and enjoy. Leave the bacardi out of this one!

In April Frost brought you details of Lulu James’ UK tour. As a warm up for this she has announced a special one-off date at the Sebright Arms for this Thursday, 3rd May. Full details of the rest of the Newcastle soul singer’s UK tour can be found here.