Awesome Music

My Morning Jacket’s frontman Jim James’ fantastic cover of The Beach Boys’ I Guess I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times sounds more like an alternate recording, only with the psych vibe amped up. It’s from James’ upcoming album of covers Tribute To 2.

Photographer Darren “Darius Twin” Pearson created this eye-catching video which uses long-exposures and Night-Writer light paintings to bring skeletons to life as they dance to the jazzy track Tarova by Snarky Puppy (not to be confused with Skinny Puppy.)

Enigmatic, ever-changing virtual group Gorillaz teamed up with vocalist Little Simz on this banger of a track, which is accompanied by a brilliantly animated pixel art music video visualized by Noah Harris and Nicos Livesey of Blinkink, along with illustrator Mckay Felt.

NASA’s Halloween treat is a set of short eerie audio clips. These celestial whistles, moans and screams were converted from radio emissions captured by various spacecraft from across the Solar System. Cassini’s beats are legit nice.

YouTube star Andrew Huang made this wonderful introductory video about modular synthesizers – both the software and hardware kind. He not only simplifies and shows how they work, he also shares what he loves about them.

What happens when you take Smash Mouth’s memetastic hit All-Star and set it to the tune of Leonard Cohen’s classic ballad Hallelujah? In the hands of musician Josh Jackson and his mighty beard, you get Internet magic.

Just in time for trick-or-treating, our church-bound pal Gud Nuse presents a fantastically dark and spine-chilling cover version of Danny Elfman’s classic This Is Halloween from Tim Burton and Henry Selick’s stop-motion masterpiece The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Musician Luna Lee’s latest gayageum arrangement transforms The Doors 1970 classic Riders on the Storm into a wonderfully nuanced, mystical experience which suits the nature of the original track beautifully.

Musician Isaac May celebrates his excitement for season two of Stranger Things with a cool acoustic cover version of Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein’s enveloping, synthwave theme song, performed on the kinds of instruments typically played in bluegrass music.

Musician Cooper Carter shreds like a boss as he replicates the rich orchestral sounds of John Williams’ Imperial March by playing all 28 of its instrumental parts on various electric guitars and basses. He previously used the same technique with Star Wars’ main theme.

The music video for Spoon’s latest single takes place entirely inside of the interface for Adobe Photoshop. But rather than retouching lead singer Britt Daniel to spruce up his look, things go totally off the rails.

Leo Moracchioli applies his his trademark blend of angry guitar and hoarse-voiced scream-singing to Rihanna’s 2007 megahit Umbrella. We like to think that Leo’s umbrella has a razor-sharpened steel tip.

A fantastic new remix of the classic Queen track All Dead, All Dead, created from a raw session of Freddie Mercury’s lead vocals – which didn’t appear on the album – and the instrumentation from 1977’s News of the World. Pre-order the amazing 40th anniversary box set now.

“Don’t call me, don’t text me after 2 AM, unless you give me some. Because I got enough friends.” Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner may not be the wittiest of lyricists, but you barely need words with pop jazz fusion this good. Watch him perform tracks from his latest album Drunk.

Spectrasonics spent 10 years refurbishing, tuning, and capturing the sounds of some of the world’s greatest pianos, organs, and synths, and collected them into a digital library you can play with a MIDI keyboard and a computer. If it’s good enough for Stevie Wonder…

The Trinity College Accidentals perform an outstanding a capella cover version of LCD Soundsystem’s classic ode to the Big Apple, New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down, with senior soloist Connor Kennedy bringing on the lead vocals.

Miami Sound Machine meets Trapt meets Yes meats Incubus meets Meatloaf in DJ Cummerbund’s latest masterpiece of unlikely musical fusion. Seriously, how does the hell does he envision these combinations?

Pitchfork offers a factually accurate, yet snarky animated look at one of the best bands ever, who despite all efforts to shirk fame, fortune, and conventionality went on to become a huge phenomenon and record the greatest album of all time. Animated by Joren Cull.

The legendary and inimitable singer/songwriter dropped by the NPR Music offices to turn in a captivating performance, filled with the perfect blend of sardonic wit, sentimentality, and raspy vocals we’ve come to appreciate over many decades. Even at age 73, he’s still got it.

Musician Davie504 checks out a crazy bass guitar that has 11 more strings than an ordinary 4-string, and does his best to slap his way across even its ridiculously thin and barely usable fat strings at the edges. More 15-string action here.

(Flashing lights) “Forgiving who you are for what you stand to gain. Just know that if you hide, it doesn’t go away.” MGMT went full goth both in their new single and in its music video. It’s not groundbreaking, but man is it catchy.

(PG-13: Language) “They criticizing the lyrics, guess everybody’s a critic, look: I push the limit while rappers is pushing gimmicks. I use it to push my pen and then add it to the premise hook.” Wu-Tang. New album. ‘Nuff said.

Puddles Pity Party is back with another flawless cover, this time taking on one of our favorite songs of all time, the Pixies’ 1988 classic Where Is My Mind?, in a fantastic arrangement by Storm Large and The Balls.