Kevin Bronson on January 28th, 2010

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[Not even a month into the new year, and Buzz Bands HQ is already swimming in new music. In the interest of servicing your iPods, I’ve batched several recent mailings into one post. These include two label samplers, a promo company’s sampler and Paste magazine’s Songs for Haiti vault. Happy clicking.]

L.A.’s Dazzler covers the Outfield on New City’s sampler. Photo by Benjy Russell.

‣ Sub Pop ushers us into 2010 with not a little bit of chest-thumping and something called the “Cybersex” sampler, which may or may not have made it through my spam filter, I ain’t saying. At 25 or so tracks, it’s sprawling, and it’s got songs from all the label’s buzz bands, including Beach House, No Age, Fruit Bats [playing the Echoplex tonight] and Avi Buffalo, as well as a live track from someone doing business as Nirvana. Have to admit that “Jail La La” – the preview song off the Dum Dum Girls’ “I Will Be” (due March 30) – is a lot better than I thought (most this current recycle-the-fuzzy-girl-groups craze is giving me a headache). But the class of the comp is “Falling From the Sun,” off the Album Leaf’s forthcoming “A Chorus of Storytellers” (Feb. 2). Scintillating. Download.

‣ New City is a promotions company that has sent out a pretty nifty January sampler. Normally I wouldn’t re-post the whole thing, but this includes songs by locals Red Cortez, Satellite Crush and Dazzler, among others. And while I’ve never been fond of the part of the 1980s that synth- and vocoder-wielding Dazzler plumbs, its cover of the Outfield’s “Your Love” brought a smile to my face. For some reason. Download.

‣ The folks behind Lefse Records – home to Pitchfork darlings Neon Indian, as well as Tape Deck Mountain – have spun off another label, Waaga. The Waaga compilation/sampler features a lot of instrumental, experimental and just plain out-there stuff (check out “Shutterbugs” by Motherly if you’re adventurous, “Tell Her” by Boddicker if you’re not so). Download.

‣ And finally, you can get a lot for a little in Paste magazine’s Songs for Haiti vault. Dozens of artists have donated MP3s, and for a small donation you get to cherry-pick. (And if you’ve already donate to Haiti relief efforts elsewhere, you can still gain access.) Details here.