On Tuesday night, Syracuse indie-pop mini-orchestra Ra Ra Riot (or “the not-so-dancey Passion Pit,” as my old boss once so aptly described it) stopped by the big city to play “Shadowcasting” for “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”

We’re less than a month away from the band’s Nov. 2 appearance at ACM@UCO, and I couldn’t be more excited. Its first record, “The Rhumb Line,” was somehow tender, vulnerable and catchy all at the same time, and one of my favorites from 2008. Watch:

In the Oklahoma music scene, few are eerier than Norman's Magnificent Bird, and just last week, the band posted an odd, alluring video to YouTube, to go with the song “Nowhere to Hide.” All rainy and black-and-white, a pretty, pale ghost haunts a depressed English major around the University of Oklahoma's campus. Watch it below.

You can stream their album “Superdark Can Happen to Anyone” at their Bandcamp page for free, or purchase it for $9.99. Also, the track “Cowboys are Blue Because of What They Have to Do” is available for free download.

M83’s excellent, acclaimed, new double-LP, “Hurry Up, We're Dreaming,” is out now, and this weird, stunning video surfaced online recently to promote it.  

Watch as some very gifted students escape their very Charles Xavier-inspired school to run around, experiment with their powers, watch the sun set, and get creepy glowing alien eyes. Bizarre story for sure, but it’s a perfect complement to the explosive synth-driven soundtrack that is “Midnight City.”



The album is also still available for streaming, if you’re afraid to commit to spending $12.99 on it. Hit that up at Disco Naivete.

Choctaw folkie and singer/songwriter Ryan Lawson recently announced the release of his new album, “Hack & Saw Nation,” which you can stream for free or purchase at his Bandcamp page. Two live-recorded songs, “One Year Ago” and “Toxic Fumes,” are also available for free.

Lawson’s signature croon is a state treasure, and comes bolstered here by Melissa Stevens’ backing vocals. Also featured on the album are guitarist Aaron Tackett, bassist Kristina Tackett, multi-intstrumentalist Brad Fielder and fiddle player Daniel Foulks (who made an OKS appearance on video just a few weeks ago).

Can’t recommend this one enough. Stream it below, and do consider shelling out a couple of bucks for this one. “Broken Record”’s worth the $5 itself.

Many an indie musician is drawing from throwback video games for influence these days (see: Neon Indian, Flying Lotus, The Nghiems), so it just kinda made sense for dance and techno-soundscape artist Polinski to put together this awesome, pixelated text-adventure video for the song “Stitches.” Pretty dramatic stuff:

Wisconsin soft-rockers Bon Iver (whose live show I was lucky enough to catch in Kansas City about two months back) and Canadian chanteuse Feist both played “Later with Jools Holland” last week, and additional videos from those sessions have surfaced, now totaling six in all. 

I share because they’ve released two of this year’s most terrific albums and each has an absolute all-star supporting cast behind their live shows. Watch for Colin Stetson and his big, groaning bass sax behind Justin Vernon (dude smashes on “Perth”) and mom jeans-sportin’ vocal trio Mountain Man  bolstering Feist’s choruses. It’s a good thing those ladies’ voices are better than their haircuts.

My picks are “Perth” and “How Come You Never Go There,” but all six are posted below, for your perusal.