The first full-length album from Ghost Town is out this week.
But this release is a departure for the band's Jed Town, formerly of Fetus Productions and ICU.
Instead of the avant-garde experimental pop or industrial electronica of his former acts, Sky Is Falling lays on the melody and harmonies, an expression of Town's longtime love of John Lennon and the Beatles.
Joining Town in Ghost Town is Mark Beesley (from the band Dean Savage), with Bryan Shaw on drums.
Beesley said the first song they played together was a cover of David Wiffen's Driving Wheel made famous in 1970 by Tom Rush.
"I remember the arrangement came together very quickly and naturally - Jed and I found we wanted to scratch a similar musical itch. Like we'd caught a rash in 1972 and Ghost Town was the ointment."
"As we began writing and playing together we soon found we had a suite of songs that wanted to be an album."
Laura Marling has released a fourth preview track from her upcoming sixth studio album Semper Femina, due March 10.
Nothing, Not Nearly combines the conventional and unconventional, a jarring note between acoustic jangle over a steady shuffle.
Marling says the album is about her looking specifically at women "and feeling great empathy towards them and by proxy towards myself".
"I started out writing it as if a man was writing about a woman," Marling says. "And then I thought 'It's not a man, it's me - I don't need to pretend it's a man to justify the intimacy of the way I'm looking and feeling about women'."
Kane Strang today released the video for his track Oh So You're Off I See.
It's the first single from his album due later this year.
Different colors and cuts of glass were used to help create the video's distorted effect.
The release of the clip, which was filmed in Central Otago and at the band's practice space in Dunedin, coincides with the first show on Strang's North American tour at Baby's All Right in Brooklyn.
Strang will play a string of dates including SXSW.
Why release one song when four will do? Pitch Black's fourth single from the album Filtered Senses - It's the Future Knocking - comes with remixes from three dub producers: International Observer, Alpha Steppa and Deep Fried Dub.
The release comes as the duo play their final New Zealand shows before heading to the UK.
They play Auckland tonight, Raglan tomorrow (March 4) and the Sundaise Festival near Waihi on March 10.
Soundgarden's 1988 album Ultramega OK is back.
While the grunge act really made their name with major label albums including Badmotorfinger, Superunknown and Down on the Upside, this early indie release gained them a dedicated following. But the band weren't happy with the final mix.
This expanded and remixed re-issue, due on March 10, will feature 19 tracks including six early versions of the album's tracks.
The band last year acquired the original multi-track tapes and worked with Jack Endino to create a fresh mix that, according to publicity material, ties up a persistent loose end and "remedies the sound of their full-length debut".
Thomas Oliver's new single Shine Like The Sun, mentioned here a few weeks ago, has a new video.
