Awesome Music

Ten Second Songs’ Anthony Vincent is joined by singer Joel “Roomie” Berghult to perform a medley of popular songs, joined together by a single unifying beat. It’s amazing how well they all work despite their original tempos.

“My healed chest wound transformed into a gate. Where I receive love from, where I give love from.” Recovering from a heartbreak, Björk says that The Gate is a song about transcendent love, and that her upcoming album Utopia is about rediscovering love.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea looks like a War Boy who happens to be a beast on the bass. But as Polyphonic points out, it’s ultimately his ability to harmonize with his bandmates – especially as a crest to John Frusciante’s minimal licks – that makes him special.

Musician Nigel Stanford is accompanied by a roomful of KUKA industrial robots in the video for his dynamic electronic track Automatica. The robot arms play guitar, keyboard, bass, drums, and of course wield deadly lasers. The brief behind the scenes video is worth a watch too.

We suppose it’s not officially a Rickroll unless it catches you off guard, but whatever you call it, Gud Nuse’s emotionally-charged piano and electric guitar arrangement of Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up is a legitimately awesome cover version.

(PG-13: Language) From Migos to Chance the Rapper, the triplet flow has defined 2010’s rap. Vox looked at the flow’s origins and how it works. We think they missed Snoop’s point though. It’s overuse combined with mumbling that makes for a homogenous sound.

Jason Tang spent about a month arranging elements in the game Kinacoustic to perform a medley of tunes from Ori and the Blind Forest, arranged by pianist ThePandaTooth. The resulting video is as fascinating to watch as it is to listen to. Download the file here.

We were really wondering how director Max Ksjonda created the mindblowing visuals in his clip Samoliot for the group 5’Nizza. Well, now we have the answer – it was mostly done in camera, with amazing prop work and rigging which was later cleaned up in post-production.

(PG-13: Language) An appearance on Netflix’s Luke Cage is propelling Jidenna to the mainstream. Good thing the rapper and singer has more than enough charm and wit to sustain his success. Watch him perform songs from his album The Chief on NPR Music.

Musician Amine Ayadi performs the strangest cover version of a Michael Jackson song ever – They Don’t Care About Us played on the mizwad – a middle eastern bagpipe. His performance will pull you in regardless if the instrument sounds like a goat being strangled.

Continuing his series of overly literal musical interpretations, Davie504 played a surprisingly entertaining cover of Blink 182’s 1999 pop hit All the Small Things, entirely on instruments that are way too small for him.

“In my sleep, I build machines. Nobody wants to hear about my dreams.” Singer-songwriter Jason Isbell and his band The 400 Unit dropped by NPR and turned in a relaxed, yet soul-stirring set of three songs about life and love from their wonderful album The Nashville Sound.

Coldplay lead vocalist Chris Martin dropped by BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge and turned in a wonderful cover version of Paul Simon’s award winning 1986 track Graceland, complete with the African backing vocals and rhythms that made it work so well, and a bonus horn section.

This video was posted way back in 2009, but we never saw it before, so we figured some of you guys missed it too. So sit back and enjoy as musician Peter Pringle plays an oddly soothing rendition of Somewhere over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz.

Alt-pop hitmakers Portugal. The Man turn in a fantastic acoustic cover version of the Oasis classic Don’t Look Back in Anger that’s every bit as good as the original, in no small part thanks to John Gourley’s voice. We’re going to be humming this chorus for the rest of the day.

You’ll recognize most of these meme-worthy tunes, each of which epitomizes a moment in time as well as just about anything else about the era. Though we think JordiTK should have gone with Yello’s Oh Yeah instead of Trio’s Da Da Da to represent ’80s German minimalism.

A couple’s ups and downs, as punctuated by the word “hi.” Actor and musician Jacob Anderson aka Raleigh Ritchie aka Game of Thrones’ Grey Worm wrote, directed and starred in this short film for Topman. The song is Cowards from his album You’re a Man Now, Boy.

12-year-old guitarist Lanvy is the very personification of the song she’s performing, as she deftly makes her way through Stevie Wonder’s 1976 classic Isn’t She Lovely on her beautifully embellished Luna guitar.

There are already a gazillion cover versions of the Luis Fonsi megahit Despacito, but we can honestly say this is the first time we’ve heard it played on a couple of musical calculators. Is it wrong that we like this version better?

Specdrums are electronic rings that let you map notes or sounds to any color around you. You can wear them, put them on sticks, and more. Their app lets you map colors to a variety of instruments as well as your own sounds. You can also use Specdrums with other MIDI apps.

You might think that ending a song with a fade out is a bit of a cop out, rather than finding a conclusive way to wrap up the tune. Vox explores the theory that beyond making songs end less abruptly, gently fading out a piece of music has a positive impact on listeners.

(PG-13: Language) “And all the hits are saying the same thing. There’s only tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, and life is finite. But sh*t, it feels like forever.” Funny, catchy, and tired of all of this. LCD Soundsystem picks up right where it left off.

Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas’ hit Smooth already had a great lead guitar track, but musician Leo Moracchioli went and built on that with his hard rockin’ interpretation of the tune, which isn’t necessarily better than the original, but is still pretty darned awesome.