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Listen Up! The Singles Roundup - April 13, 2007

It's Friday the Thirteenth—are you feeling superstitious? Not us. We're feeling poptastic, as we recap another week of new tunes that can cross our path anytime.

Au Revoir Simone - "A Violent Yet Flammable World"
In lesser hands, this mix of lo-fi keyboards, girl-group harmonies, and Phil Spector drums would be pure kitsch. But coming from this trio of Brooklyn indie chicks, it's pretty darn close to sublime.

Bobby Valentino - "Anonymous"
Timbaland's solo album is a hit-or-miss affair, but as a producer of other people's tracks, he's still untouchable. Here, his cascading synths give an otherwise typical R&B slow jam a fresh air of urgency.

Bright Eyes - "Four Winds"
Conor Oberst always sounds better when he surrounds himself with plenty of dustbowl orchestration, which this tune has in spades. He might finally have shaken the "Boy Wonder" tag once and for all.

Rihanna - "Umbrella" (feat. Jay-Z)
Somebody tell Jay-Z to step aside and let this girl take over the track. She's the only reason you're still president of Def Jam, for pete's sake. The new, harder sound suits her well.

Secretary Bird - "Tio"
Mike Semple wraps his rootsy rock in a soft haze of shoegazer atmospherics and comes up with a soundtrack to a widescreen, high desert saga of families torn apart by distance.

C-Mon & Kypski - "Bumpy Road" [video]
Show us one big-budget American music video that's half as entertaining as this low-budget romp from the Netherlands. Warning: It takes awhile to load, but wait until the chorus, when the fat bank robber busts out his dance moves—trust us, it's worth it.

Les Breastfeeders - "Viens Avec Moi"
You don't need to know French to know that these Montreal rockers know how to play some gee-tawr. Le rock du garage? Whatever you want to call it, it's good, noisy fun.

Miracle Fortress - "Have You See in Your Dreams"
They sing in English up in Montreal, too. One-man-band Graham Van Pelt seems equally influenced by Brian Wilson and Slowdive, and it makes for a heady combination.

The Arcade Fire - "Black Mirror"
These guys are from Montreal, too—maybe you've heard of them. Is anyone from that town not in a band?

Sea Wolf - "You're a Wolf"
Shana Levy's Let's Go Sailing has gotten more blog buzz, but Alex Church's Sea Wolf project sounds like an even more promising variation on the prickly indie-pop they made together in Irving.

--Andy Hermann
04.13.07

Click here to read last week's installment of Listen Up!