Amidst several attempts at completing a full length album the band was taken off task by numerous personal upheavals, artistic miss-directs, and an appearance on Yo Gabba Gabba--clearly a confusing time. Pulled together from a number of recording sessions that took place during 2007 and 2008, Moths is a document of songwriter Scott LD Walker’s angers and frustrations, resulting in a typically Salteens-like call to arms in attempt to overcome life’s hardships.

Pre-order and stream the EP now!

Circlesquare: Songs About Dancing And Drugs

Today is the day that Circlesquare’s highly anticipated record Songs About Dancing and Drugs is finally available in Canada. This is the kind of album that comes around once in forever, and we are proud to partner up with electronic label K7! on its release. Visit the Boompa online shop and order it now now or visit your local record store and grab a copy. We also be releasing an amazing video for “Dancers” in the upcoming weeks featuring So You Think You Can Dance Canada top ten finalists Miles Faber and Vincent Noiseux, so keep your eyes peeled.

Boompa.ca: loved and mugged

The Boompa site got a face lift a few months ago, complete with pigeons and watercolours, mountains and rain (very Vancouver). A few days ago the site was included in Smashing Magazine’s Web Design Trends For 2009. The Boompa site was designed by our own Erin Nicholson who reads Smashing daily, and is very excited about all this. The site design has been so well received that it has even been stolen by a music blog. How flattering! The case has been brought to the court of public opinion that is the Beggars Group’s Soundalak Musak: Wordpress Theme Edition. Thanks Adam F, you are the favourite!

Woodpigeon: Treasury Library Canada

Woodpigeon’s double CD Boompa debut, Treasury Library Canada c/w Houndstooth Europa, will be released next week. We love Woodpigeon and think you will too. They make the loveliest orchestral indie folk around and will make you feel good about life. You can order it in advance through the Boompa shop now and you can get a free 7-song Woodpigeon EP called La Commission Scolaire, through emusic. If you happen to be in Vancouver next weekend you can see Woodpigeon perform on Friday night at Little Mountain with Chris Smith and Jody Glenham, and on Saturday at Performance Works as part of the PuSH Festival. If you aren’t in Vancouver, or any of the European cities they stop off in during their February old-continental tour, you can watch the video for “A Moment’s Peace For Mary Christa O’Keefe”. You should just watch it. It’s very, very Canadian.

Coming Up

April: Leeroy Stagger - Everything Is Real
June: Patrick Brealey - Title TK
August: The Scott Walker Band (aka The Salteens) - Title TK
September: Woodpigeon - Die Stadt Muzikanten

• Downloads

• Knock KnockWoodpigeon - Treasury Library Canada
• “Lay All Your Love On Me”Woodpigeon - ABBA cover

Video: Woodpigeon - “A Moment’s Peace for Mary Christa O’Keefe” from Treasury Library Canada

Well, I can’t make that happen for you sad parent, but I can help! The Salteens have just finished 2 kids songs, and like all the other music the band has recorded this year, they’re free for you to download. While “All My Friends” and “Count On My Hands” are not “I’m So Happy”, we hope your little ones will like them all the same.

As always, the cover art was illustrated by the awesome Sasha Lewis. She just set up an Etsy shop selling her hand-screened prints. It’s called Malted, and while some of the prints fall in the adult swim department, the super cute bear print titled “a little more fat a little less educated” would be pretty sweet in a kids room.

In other related news, October 14 will also see the iTunes release of a digital-only Yo Gabba Gabba! soundtrack. Does it include “I’m So Happy”? NOOOOO! But it does include The Salteens’ “Be Nice To Animals” and we do think your kids will like it a lot.

Here’s the tracklisting:

1. Party In My Tummy – Yo Gabba Gabba!
2. Hey, Won’t Somebody Come Out and Play – The Little Ones
3. I Like To Dance – Yo Gabba Gabba!
4. Train Ride – Tahiti 80
5. Get The Sillies Out – Yo Gabba Gabba!
6. Happy Birthday – The Ting Tings
7. Biz’s Beat of the Day – Biz Markie
8. Be Nice To Animals – The Salteens
9. I’m So Sorry – Yo Gabba Gabba!
10. Lovely, Love My Family – The Roots
11. Pool Party – The Aquabats
12. Goodbye Song – Yo Gabba Gabba!
13. Bedtime Lullaby – Mark Kozelek

Find out what else Scott thinks is cool, or just get new Salteens music free at salteens.com.

The premier episode debuted last week and featured a cartoon on the theme of “Be Nice to Animals” with music by The Salteens. The band will be back to perform the song “Happy” next Tuesday, August 28th in an episode that will also feature a drawing lesson from Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh.

The band is really excited, though mildly disappointed that their greatest work to date has come to fruition in a bunch of kid’s songs.

Matt Sharp (co-founder and former member of Weezer) is the main thread that runs through the history of The Rentals. It is his leadership and vision that provides the focus through which the collective voices of The Rentals can be heard. The band’s debut album Return of the Rentals (1995) brilliantly incorporated Moog synthesizers, boy/girl harmonies and soaring violins all rolled into sweet and simple pop songs. Their single “Friends Of P” (number 6 on Billboard’s Modern Rock Chart) broke through The Billboard Hot 100 and into MTV’s Buzz Bin reviving elements of new wave and bringing the analog synthesizer back to the forefront of pop music. The band supported Return of the Rentals by going on the road with such well know acts as Garbage, Blur, Alanis Morrisette and The Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The band’s sophomore effort Seven More Minutes was an open love letter to Barcelona and the European music scene. The critically heralded follow up featured a whirlwind of collaborators including members of Blur, Elastica, Lush, Weezer and Ash.

In 1999, at the height of his creative output, Sharp mysteriously left the music world. Five years later, he emerged in the small country town of Leipers Fork, TN—it was here where Sharp retreated to work in the kind of studio isolation unheard of in popular music. During the course of the recording, Sharp met Canadian folk-rock duo Tegan and Sara and lent his Moog mastery to their hit album So Jealous. In 2004, Vancouver independent label Boompa Records released Sharp’s self-titled solo debut—a lo-fi, languid album set deep in the terrain of bleached out Americana.

2006 sees Sharp readying his return to the new wave pop/rock spotlight with new lineup of The Rentals in tow: original founding member Rachel Haden (that dog!), new members Sara Radle (vocals/multi-instrumentalist), Ben Pringle (synth master), Lauren Chipman (viola/vocals) and Dan Joeright (drums).

Their first show in over a decade, the return of The Rentals recently kicked off with an incredible sold-out, double-encore performance at Los Angeles’ Henry Fonda Theatre, quickly followed by two nights at the Yokohama Arena in Japan before they hit Vancouver. The band hopes to hit the studio later this year to record a new full-length album for release in 2007.

July 25: Vancouver, BC - Richard’s On Richards w. The Salteens, and Ozma

Read: mtv.com article
Visit: therentals.com
Listen: myspace.com/therentals

Leeroy and his band, The Sinking Hearts, just finished packing up the van that will take them on a tour through western Canada. Visit the Tours section for details.

Our good friends at one of Canada’s best music blogs, iheartmusic.net, are featuring Catlow right now. Go check it out here and enter for your chance to win a copy of Catlow’s debut album, Kiss the World!

The title track off Kiss the World is featured on The L Word: The Third Season, which is in stores now. The soundtrack from the hit Showtime drama also features songs by Sleater Kinney, Le Tigre, and Esthero.

Kevin Kane has been busy in Vancouver this week, mixing songs with Steven Drake of The Odds. Check back for more info on his Boompa debut.

The Salteens will head BACK into the Hive Studios this Sunday under what frontman, and Boompa president Scott Walker calls “duress”. Check out the Blog for news from the band on how their next album is coming along.

In other news, Chad Blue, of my project: blue, has started writing songs for the follow up to their debut self-titled EP, which is apparently very popular in Scandinavia.

Chris Robinson and Andrea Higgens are music supervisors for Arpix and they’ve gotten songs by Boompa bands played on shows and independent films including Radio Free Roscoe, The Surreal Gourmet and Life With Derek. They are super fans of us, and we are super fans of them.

Chris and Andrea also run a PodCast we listen to every week called Podzapper Indie 6 and the week of September 2, 2005 they did a show just about Boompa Records! The spotlight features new and unreleased materials from 6 of our artists including a bunch of stuff the Salteens have been working on in the studio the past few months. Go log into your iTunes and find the PodCast Podzapper Indie 6.

Some of you might have forgotten about the band. Like that girl on the Salteens Myspace but the new album should remind you all quite nicely that the band is still around and has not yet broken up.

Before the recording sessions started I asked Scott how preparations for the album were going and he replied, “The band has been rehearsing like crazy in their practice space that is growing mushrooms in the carpet-for real.”

There is no name for the album yet and according to Kevin you can’t be told the possible titles because “their sheer power would melt the internet”. Kevin has been so kind as to keep everyone updated with day to day summaries of the of the recording experience on the Salteens blog.

The current state of the album is that the bed tracks are done and they are just waiting mostly for keyboards and vocals, some of which will be tackled this weekend once again at the Hive. According to Kevin’s blog entries there are numerous styles of song-manship on this album including a ‘punk-ish’ song, a ‘rock’ song and a ‘latin’ song but you will just have to wait until the album comes out before you can judge the relevance of these monikers.