Kevin Bronson on August 2nd, 2011

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It’s hard for me to even type David Kilgour’s name without getting a warm-and-fuzzy. The music of the iconic (and I don’t think it’s stretch to use that word here) New Zealand indie-rocker first flew onto my shelves via early-’90s mixtapes traded with friends from far-off lands – packed as they were with artists from Flying Nun Records such as Kilgour’s band with brother Hamish, the Clean, as well as the Chills, Straitjacket Fits, Bailter Space, the Bats, the 3Ds, the Verlaines … aw, hell, I should make you a mixtape. Kilgour’s jangling, chiming guitar tones, slack melodies and oblique poetry added up to a subtle genius that emerged in his solo work too (in particular, 1994’s “Sugar Mouth”). Thankfully, Merge remains a proponent of his recent work, including the 2009 album by the Clean, “Mister Pop,” and this spring’s outing from David Kilgour & the Heavy Eights, “Left by Soft.” On “Diamond Mine,” he coaxes three worlds of sound out of his hybrid guitar (players can get an idea here), of which he says, “It has the sound of mountains collapsing, especially at volume.” Fans of the current strain of noisy pysch-pop would do well to poke around in his catalog.

||| Download: “Diamond Mine”

||| Live: David Kilgour performs Aug. 16 at the Bootleg Theater, part of a co-headlining tour with Richard Buckner.

Photo by Pufferish Photography