Today's Hotness: Mates Of State, Armalite, Lovely Feathers

>> Sorry for the couple days' worth of nothing. Monday night we took care of a bunch of administrative stuff and did some heavy listening. Last night we got a surprise invitation to see the Boston taping of This American Life. Host Ira Glass and friends are on a brief tour right now to promote the forthcoming debut of the This American Life television show (really) on Showtime. The taping was great and will air March 17 -- we know nobody ever does anything on March 17 and are sure you will all be home listening to public radio that day.

While the theme of the show was TV, there was actual music content, which is the reason why we can mention all of this here. Opening and closing the show was wife-and-husband duo Mates Of State, who played several times throughout the program as well. We had streamed some of their tracks before, but nothing we heard made an impression. The live performances last night definitely sold us, however. There were two or three fetching originals including "Like U Crazy" [QT video here], depending on how you count, and covers of Nico's "These Days" and Phantom Planet's "California," a/k/a the theme song to the recently defunct teen soap "The O.C." As it turns out, Ira Glass is a huge "O.C." fan. If you get the Showtime on your television set, we highly recommend the show, clips of which were screened last night in between the typical slate of stories. Anyway, Mates Of State's most recent release Bring It Back was released last March on Barsuk. How about some MP3s courtesy of the Barsuk site?

Mates Of State -- "Think Long" -- Bring It Back
Mates Of State -- "Fraud In The '80s" -- Bring It Back
[right click and save as]

>> According to a MySpace bulletin Armalite drummer Jeff Ziga [pictured here] has fracture bones in his hand. As a result the pop-punk supergroup, which rarely performs live, will not be playing the Philadelphia show March 10 that we first wrote about here. The band expects Mr. Ziga's hand will be healed in about six weeks, and hopes to reschedule the show for around then. Armalite's self-titled release was one of our favorite records of 2006. You can buy it here and download two MP3s to boot.

>> You Ain't No Picasso reports here that Montreal-based pop weirdos Lovely Feathers have finished recording a sophomore set. The band hopes the record will be released this summer. A check of the Equator Records web site reveals, well, it reveals nothing, as it is under construction. We seem to recall it being under construction a year ago as well. We reviewed Lovely Feathers' debut here last March.

>> Hey, EMusic is selling Frightened Rabbits' Sing The Greys with a bonus track. It also appears as if EMusic has licensed for sale the entire Slumberland catalog, which is great. It means that you can go right over there and purchase Lorelei's amazing Asleep EP and the whole Slumberland catalog. Anyway, expect to see more about Frightened Rabbit here in the future, as we've tapped them as one of the acts to participate in the second wave of our Show Us Yours feature.