Listen Up! No. 83: The Lionheart Brothers - The Desert

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Norwegian quartet The Lionheart Brothers serve notice of their impending second record, due later this year and as-yet untitled, with new track 'The Desert'. They've reigned in the bright psychedelic tones of their well-received (and Norwegian Grammy nominated) debut, 2008's Dizzy Kiss, instead opting to decorate a pulsing rhythm section with murky vocals and a blizzard of pitch-shifting shoegaze atmospherics.Aptly, the video mimics the guitar hook, twisting round and round in queasy unison with the music - while someone plays silly buggers in the snow.

French Horn Rebellion Announce New EP and Video

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Synth-pop duo French Horn Rebellion have released details of a brand new EP, This Moment, which will be released on 22 November by Once Upon A Time Records.

The EP will feature 'This Moment' as well as new track 'Last Summer', plus remixes of the former track by hip East Village producer Kap10Kurt, amongst others.

There aren't any UK tour dates in the offing at present, but we can only hope.

Here's the video for 'This Moment', which Time Out described as "a disco-tinted patchwork of psychedelic yacht-rock with big pop pretensions." Couldn't have put it better myself.

Listen Up! No.16: The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Higher Than the Stars

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Artsy/cuddly new video from TPOBPAH - the emo-est hipsters this side of 80s jangle-pop - showcasing their artsy/cuddly new track. Directed by Dylan Mulick (?), apparently.

Listen Up! No. 15: Black Francis - Cinema Star

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Missed this? Missed out. Something Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV doesn't seem to be doing much of, judging by the lyrics.

Listen Up! No. 9: Laura Marling - Made By Maid

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(Nu-) Folk doesn't always mean ukelele's, banjos and a horribly misjudged faux-authenticity - Marling once again proves herself head and shoulders above her contemporaries (and lovers).

Listen Up! No.7: The New Pornographers - Silver Jenny Dollar

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Dan Bejar aims for his best British accent and comes out sounding somewhere between Brett Anderson and David Bowie (is there a difference?). Meanwhile, the rest of the band approximate The Auteurs circa New Wave. A distinctly anglophile affair from the Vancouver groovers.