Premiere: Night Powers' Sensual, Ominous "We Will Always Be Together"

The dinner party. Sounds tame enough. Safe even. Good times, right? Well, it's also a reliable concept for both awesome movie and music video. In terms of the latter, on the one hand you've got INXS' hedonistic "The One Thing," and on the other you've got Spectres' contemporary and edgy psychodrama "Mirror." But for something a little more subtle and sensual -- and, we might add, in the spirit of the season -- may we direct your attention to the clip above, which we are pleased to premiere for you today? As the headline suggests, embedded up there is the debut video for co-ed Brooklyn goth triumvirate Night Powers' "We Will Always Be Together."

The foreboding but forthrightly rocking tune is built up from a syncopated, thudding beat that sounds like a body hitting a table top (or a re-envisioning of the classic stomp from "Doctorin' The Tardis"), over which vibratoed guitars, corporeal keys and guitarist Rob Viola and vocalist Natalya Krimgold's tiered voices commingle. "We Will Always Be Together" is taken from the two-year-old trio's debut release The Hand Of The Thief, a concept record that highlights the band's old world-flavored, cinematic noir across nine songs rich with intrigue and passion. The video for "We Will Always Be Together" was directed by Pavel Ezrohi, and yes, there is a dinner party. And a corpse on the table, a vivacious, Satyr-like visitor that elevates the revelry to a frenzy, and keen performances all around from the vintage-garb bedecked players young and old.

Incidentally, Night Powers currently seeks a (female) live drummer. As the aforementioned Mr. Viola happens to be a Clicky Clicky Top 5 All Time Drummer in addition to a guitarist, that's a proverbial big seat to fill, but, c'mon, you can do it. Viola, of course, once drummed for Haywood [so many words] and The Red And The Black, among others, and more recently worked on electronic projects including Faculties, which we wrote about here in 2011. Night Powers co-founder Inbar Kishoni's bona fides include playing keyboard with Denver act Mannequin Makeout, while vocalist Ms. Krimgold is also an accomplished film and theater actress. Speaking of, it's not an accident that Night Powers shows carry an air of theatricality. The act's next performance is at a house show in Brooklyn on Halloween night, with support from Courtship Ritual, and we will venture to say that if you attend this event it will be a fine time (and not just because Night Powers' live show looks epic). The Hand Of The Thief was released as a digital download and in a limited edition of 100 cassettes by Mirror Universe Tapes June 25; order your copy right here, and stream the one-third of the ball of wax via the Bandcamp embed below, or all of the wax via Spotify.

Night Powers: Facebook | Internerds

Pleased To Meet: Faculties

We don't imagine there is a more die-hard (die-hardier? with a vengeance, sir) Haywood fan out there than us. Consequently, we spend a preposterous amount of time and energy wondering when we will hear new music from any of the band's principals, as Haywood has been mostly dead and/or not-quite alive for a decade now. And so we are very pleased to report multi-instrumentalist Rob Viola, who manned the drum kit for the late, great 'Wood, has returned with myriad ambient electronic and electropop projects. Many of these operate under the nom de guerre Statikluft, and we've been living with a lot of Statikluft music for months and months. But, much to our surprise, Mr. Viola has commissioned a new vessel with vocalist Vinny Lopez called Faculties, and the Brooklyn-based duo's first offering, the song "Weekend Warrior," is a dense, deep hybrid of deli-sliced beats, sinewy guitar and synth hooks, shot through with plenty of ghosts in the machine.

The story goes that Mssrs. Viola and Lopez met when the former was impressed by the latter's karaoke rendition of "Everybody's Talkin'," a prominent tune from the soundtrack to the film Midnight Cowboy; surprisingly, Faculties is Lopez' first band. "Weekend Warrior" leads off Faculties' forthcoming self-titled EP and it is gorgeously arrayed and exquisitely textured and if you are fans of acts like Arc In Round or White Laces, you are going to be very, very excited about this. Below is an embed of the tune to stream or download; the full EP is expected to drop next month. Everyone, this is Faculties. Faculties, this is everyone.

FACULTIES - Weekend Warrior

Faculties: Interzizzles | Facebook | Vimeo | Soundcloud