Free-Range Video: It Hugs Back, Johnny Foreigner

>> Pitchfork today got the exclusive on the new video from It Hugs Back for the track "Now & Again." The song, from the Kent, England-based quartet's forthcoming full length Inside Your Guitar, is dense and beautiful like early Stereolab. The video itself is styled like many of the best early MTV clips (perhaps because there was a similar budget?) and features the band rocking out in a warehouse as Tetris-ish wooden blocks do their own peculiar variety of bumping and grinding. We'll be featuring It Hugs Back Monday in the next installment of our Show Us Yours feature. Inside Your Guitar, as we've reported several times, will be released by 4AD April 7.

>> Readers may recall we were very excited to go see Johnny Foreigner play at the annual CMJ music "conference" last fall. And then you may recall we got horribly ill and had to stay in Boston. Or maybe you won't. Anyway, that was no fun. But fortunately for us, when the Birmingham, England-based noise pop titans dropped in to record their radio session with New York-based WNYC someone thought to roll some video tape. The truth is the video quality of the clips we're about to link to is not that great. But the audio is very good, and there is a bit of a surprise as well, in the form of a new tranced-out arrangement for the old Johnny Foreigner single "Sofa Core." The band's most recent single (only released digitally, as it turns out) "DJs Get Doubts" gets a stirring reading, and the band makes an attempt at a refined take on "Salt, Peppa and Spinderella," although the song is much too boisterous to be held back. But let's get to the video: there is no embedding option, so click the hyperlinks to watch "DJs Get Doubts," "Salt, Peppa and Spinderella" or "Sofa Core."