Here’s some of the new(ish) music that I’ve been enjoying lately.

Again, an eclectic mix – from Jay-Z’s lead single off of his upcoming album to new Decemberists… I like all good music.

Here it is.

1) The Decemberists – The Perfect Crime: I love the Decemberists and the new album, The Crane Wife, is a beautiful album filled with songs of the quality that you’d expect from the group. Good Weather for Air Strikes has a great review of the album. Besides picking what I think may be the weakest song on the album for the lead single, Capital did a great job with the Decemberists major label debut – meshing the distinctive indie sound perfectly with increased production elements.

2) Jay-Z – Show Me What You Got: Jay’s last offering, The Black Album, was a great commercial hip-hop album; providing the soundtrack to my econometric assignments [do you think Jay would be proud to hear that "Lucifer" was the official song to my regression analysis?]. Show Me What You Got samples the classic loop from Rump Shaker and while it’s a fun song it isn’t, as Oh Word accurately states, “the kind of song that’ll define production for the next few years“.

3) Phoenix – Long Distance Call: I like these guys. A lot. I’ve enjoyed the electro pop-rockness that is Phoenix, a Paris band, for a number of years and their third album, It’s Never Been Like That, is filled with what you’d expect: catchy and up-tempo pop-rock songs. I’ve now had the lyrics to this song circling in my head for two weeks.

Again, grab the podcast here, or listen below.