Ancestors

In the two years since post-metal giants Isis broke up, multiple pretenders have made their play for the genre's throne. Los Angeles quintet Ancestors stand out from the pack due to their incorporation of Pink Floyd-influenced psychedelics and occasional flourishes of European-influenced melodic doom that harken back to mid-'90s Paradise Lost.

The group's well-oiled approach is more than evident on their third album, In Dreams and Time, released tomorrow. We exclusively have the opening track from the record, available as a stream below.

"Whispers" is a nine-minute wonder that begins slowly. By the middle of the song, it is bursting with bellowing choruses, haunting Moog work from Matt Barks and equally haunting organ and piano work from Jason Watkins. Beefy riffs from guitarist/vocalist Justin Maranga crescendo with a vicious outburst that would be at home coming out of the speakers at a High on Fire show.

Click below to listen to "Whispers."

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Jonathan Silberman

When Occupy L.A. was raided by police in late November, Emily Lacy saw lots of her friends arrested. To raise money for their bail, the 32-year-old Alhambra folk musician performed a show at Machine Project gallery in Echo Park. It was all part of what she called her "Occupy Music" events, Lacy says with a toothy grin.

The disbanding of the protesters at City Hall broke her heart. But the events did inspire her new album, Rise, which is available tomorrow, Wed., Jan. 11, as a free download. The work's six original songs about protest help document the Occupy movement in a way that the media failed to, she says. "[Rise] is a political exorcism through sound and singing," she promises.

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Iman Omari's uncle Josef Leimberg is scuttling around his Eagle Rock studio, working on improving its feng shui. He pauses by a door that's become unhinged. "A 400-pound dude busted through this, trying to get his rappers in to record." That wasn't going to fly, however, because Bootsy Collins was working on a track.

It's Black Friday, and 22-year-old singer and producer Omari is here wrapping up the last song on his album, Energy, which is out today. Instead of the sweaty palms that usually accompany an impending deadline, however, he's remarkably serene. A gentle woman named Gia arrives to do her spoken word guest spot. Only when pressed does she reveal she's Gia Scott-Heron, daughter of the legendary soul poet Gil Scott-Heron, who passed earlier this year.

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Prosthetic Records

Animals As Leaders

Judging by the feedback we received from our post on instrumental metal bands, many of you out there in blogland are Animals As Leaders fans. In fact, a few of you took umbrage when we ranked the group's guitarist Tosin Abasi at number two in our top metal guitarists under 30 list. "Tosin should have been number one!" you cyber-screamed.

Hopefully we can make things right with this exclusive track from Animals As Leaders' new album, Weightless, available as a stream below. Like the other songs on the work, it continues their ornate progression down an instrumental path, and the best part is that it never feels like they're showing off.

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Grouplove

You know that autumnal mix of optimism and anticipation that arrives with the electricity in the newly-crisp air? That's what Grouplove's debut full-length, Never Trust A Happy Song, sounds like.

The work dropped Tuesday on Atlantic Records, just in time for fall, following a year of hype for the L.A.-based quintet that included being featured in Taco Bell commercials and on the FIFA 12 soundtrack. Here's their single "Colours:"

Grouplove - Colours by Atlantic Records UK

Tomorrow night, Grouplove opens for Irish dance-rock darlings Two Door Cinema Club at the Wiltern. You already know that we at West Coast Sound are arbiters of cool, so believe us when we tell you that Grouplove is about to get huge. Here are our top five reasons why.

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Andrea Domanick

Little Boots, SBTRKT and NewVillager are all slated for this fall's Mondrian Sessions

A free show? Great. A free show curated by a local label? Even better. A free show curated by a local label at a swanky rooftop bar? Count us in.

L.A.'s own IAMSOUND Records is teaming up once again with the Mondrian Hotel for a new slate of free Mondrian Sessions at its posh Skybar. The poolside concert series kicks off this Friday with an acoustic set from UK electropop darling Little Boots.

The full schedule is below.

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See also:
Spotify: The Honeymoon's Over
Which Is Better: Spotify or Grooveshark?

With MOG's big roll out last week, your options for streaming music sites are more numerous than ever. Its main rivals are Jango, Spotify, Rhapsody, AOL Music, Rdio, Last.fm, and Grooveshark, and competitions is fierce.

But how are they all different? They each cost about 10 bucks per month and their functionality is pretty similar, though some services play the specific songs you want and some are radio station style sites. Their catalogs, however, vary drastically. Do they have what you want? And how easily can you find it?

There were many possible ways to determine the answers to these questions, but we chose the most scientific one: searching out Captain Beefheart's seminal 1969 album Trout Mask Replica. And then we also looked up our faves J*DaVeY, because they're awesome, somewhat obscure, and their name's spelled weird.

See the results on our color-coded charts below. Remember, green means go and red means stop!

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Rapper/producer Jonwayne prefers his artists enigmatic. "It's like people feel the need to know the emcee as a person in order to get into the music, on some soap opera shit. Not saying it's good or bad, but it's almost as if having a baby would boost your sales more than improving your craft," the frequent Low End Theory artist says.

The La Habra 21-year-old toys with that notion on his latest, just-released rap mixtape, the very good I Don't Care, but only to a point: He might be opening the door, but admission's free. The mixtape's intensely personal lyrics seem to be more of an artistic exercise than a get-to-know-me mixer for Jonwayne, and he named it I Don't Care because that's his answer to the question, "Why give it out for free?"

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L.J. Williamson

I cain't quit yew.

Last month I posed the question: Which Is Better: Spotify or Grooveshark? Though my comparison of the two music subscription services wasn't entirely conclusive, I reckoned that, in the end, "Grooveshark just has too many glitches, whereas if a track shows up on Spotify, you know it'll play. That means less futzing with the phone and more busting out the beats."

And, it's true. Hooking up with Spotify was as exciting as having a new lover. At first. Then, after we spent more and more time together, little cracks started to show. Little flaws that may not have seemed noticeable in the initial throes of that hot streaming passion were suddenly impossible to ignore.

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On his new mixtape, Hoodmorning (No Typo), Game insults his haters' geographical acumen. "I'm in Cannes, France," he barks. "You don't know where that shit is." This might not be the strongest diss ever, but there's much to like on the tape; his voice is plaintively expressive, and he has an ear for world-beating hooks.

On the eve of The R.E.D. Album -- slated for release on August 23 -- Game sounds hungry and heated. His flow has grown more nimble. In fact, Hoodmorning is one of the liveliest mixtapes of the summer, comically rendered and adventurous in scope. Here are our five favorite tracks from the work.

5. "Uncle Otis"
Though not quite on par with Game's still-mesmerizing 2005 track, "300 Bars," this hilarious diss track is a keeper. The beat, produced by the relative unknown Mars, is driven by a scratched vocal loop and tinkling pianos so explosive they redeem the Auto-Tuned hook. Game, for his part, raps like a man in thirst of avengement. He takes shots at everyone from Jay-Z - "Niggas think they the coldest, but nigga, you just the oldest" -- to Kreayshawn, whom he calls a "little white bitch." (He says he dissed her because of her n-bomb usage.) In any case, his flow is commanding throughout, though, and it's refreshing to hear an MC refuse to mince words in hip-hop's increasingly stale climate.

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