Get Fresh Tuesday...

1) "Awesome" - The Bloody Beetroots feat. The Cool Kids, from OK in Art

The Bloody Beetroots are awesome. They have a name that sounds like it belongs to either some arty indie band or some sort of early '80s comedy-punk outfit, but they're actually an Italian house duo. They wear Venom masks when they perform, and they're doing work with The Cool Kids, who, as everyone knows, can do very little wrong by me.

"Awesome" is a great mix of creepy horror movie distortions, glammy glittering synths and laid back rhymes. I feel like a cooler person for having heard this song.

2) "Don't Trust Me" - 3Oh!3 (Acid Girls Erotic Braille Dub), from Discodust

There was a time not too long ago where I actively shunned all things Top 40. I was that guy, where if a band that I already like suddenly "had a hit," I would stop listening to them.

Thankfully, I've mellowed with age, and every so often, I let a little stupid, Kiss FM-type pop in my life. Right now, that stupid pop is taking the form of 3Oh!3, a charming but not-overly-talented synthpop outfit from Denver. You've probably heard their moderately misogynistic hit "Don't Trust Me" coming playing over the loud speakers at Urban Behaviour. I can't help but like this song. It's really catchy.

When re-imagined by LA-based bloggers-turned-producers Acid Girls, though, "Don't Trust Me" mutates. It stops being cheery throwaway pop and turns into the bastard child of Giorgio Moroder and The Prodigy circa "Out of Space."

Forget summer picnics and beers on the beach, this version of the song makes me want to go somewhere dark and sweaty to take drugs and dance.

3) "Smart Niggas" - Big Twins feat. Krondon, from Nah Right

Sweet mother of shit this song is heavy.

Straight '90s-style New York shit, complete with beats by Alchemist. The main MC on this song sounds like he spent the day swallowing razor blades. I actually got a little nervous while listening to this.

If you wanted something that would make hip-hop a threat again, or something that would make M.O.P look like Soulja Boy, this is for you.

Get Fresh Tuesday...

So, I skipped Old Shit Sunday this week because I was in London -- the dull one, not the good one -- interacting with the in-laws. Sorry about that.

1) "Kiss of Life" - Friendly Fires, from Bigstereo

If I ever meet DJ A-Trak, I'll have to thank him for introducing me to half of the new music I've gotten into over the last six months. DiskJokke, who was in this blog last week, DJ Gant-Man and The Friendly Fires were all introduced to me through the two mix CDs A-Trak released earlier this year, Infinity + 1 and Fabriclive .45. If you haven't heard either mix, I suggest you make changing that a priority.

I was aware of The Fires before, but wrote them off as some sort of wanky hipster band without ever really listening to them. That was a huge mistake. It goes to show that you shouldn't pre-judge music, because you could wind up missing some really great stuff.

The Friendly Fires are like the dance-rock band that irony forgot, which is great. As much as I like all that DFA disco-punk stuff, it occasionally felt like some of the bands in that scene were too interested in being cool, rather than filling dance floors. The Fires, on the other hand, are all about getting on the floor and going hard. "Kiss of Life" is the first single on their as-of-yet unreleased second album,

2) "URgencia" - Manusa and Prince Abraham for CIAfrica, from Dutty Artz

CIAfrica is a new French-based label that specializes in urban music from Cote D'Ivoire. I don't know much about Manusa and Prince Abraham, but "URgencia" is a terrifying, anxiety-inducing chunk of Africanized post-grime. It's the sort of song that, as a some-time DJ, I'd love to play in a club, but at the same time, I'd be terrified to play it in front of a crowd of any size for fear people would start punching each other in the face.

Take Lethal B's famous 2004 fight-starting anthem "Pow," then feed it a metric tonne of meth. "URgencia" is that crazy.

3) "Momen7um" - 2Horsemen, from Off the Radar

2Horsemen are Brazilian, which is almost enough for me. I can't think of a Brazilian band that I don't like: CSS, Bonde do Role, Ratos de Porão, Black Alien and Speed, all excellent outfits. If Brazil is good at one thing, it's making music. That and soccer.

"Momen7um" is a tight electro-house number, with oddly Black-era APop EBM overtones. It's funky enough to pack dancefloors, but dark enough to keep things interesting. A guaranteed winner.

Get Fresh Tuesday...

1) "Cearadactylus" - DiskJokke, from Feel My Bicep

DiskJokke is the alter-ego of Norwegian producer Joachim Dyrdahl. To be totally honest, I don't know that much about him, except that he did an amazing remix of Metronomy's "Heartbreaker" last year, he makes songs with titles like "Cearadactylus," "Tungvekter" and "I Was Go to Morocco and I Don't See You," and he shares a country with Röyksopp, which almost counts as an endorsement in my books.

"Cearadactylus" is a good dance tune, but it's not a full-fledged freak-out stomper. Instead, it chugs along at a medium pace, with some nifty conga-type percussion thrown in for good measure. If I was DJing a party, this would definitely be something I'd play at the beginning of the evening to start lifting people's spirits.

2) "Right Hand Hi" - Kid Sister, from Kunk - Budapest

If there's one thing that's remarkable about Kid Sister, it's how she's managed to be so successful with so little recorded material. It's that it's been almost three years since she first became indie-famous, two years since she released her first single, a year since she received mainstream recognition thanks to collaboration with Kanye on the single "Pro Nails," and she still has yet to release an album.

"Right Hand Hi" is the fourth single off her still-unreleased debut album Ultraviolet, which is now set to come out in October on Fool's Gold. If you expected Kid to come out with another song about drinking, fucking and destroying, you guessed right. While "Right Hand Hi" doesn't have the same level of lyricism as some of her other work, it makes up for it with an anthemic chorus, bouncy beats, and synth-riffs that get stuck in your head for days.

3) "Bianca" - Guy J, from MySpace

Guy J's trippy brand of electro-house has lead me to two conclusions.

One, I was born either ten years too early or ten years too late. Generation X had acid house, which I love. Even though I was entirely too young to be part of the dawn of the rave scene, "Move Any Mountain" is still one of my favourite songs ever. Generation Y, meanwhile, has all that Justice/Simian Mobile Disco blog house stuff, which I love, but I distinctly feel old any time I'm in a venue where they play it.

Two, Israelis are awesome. Far too many people only associate Israel with the country's ongoing political trouble, which is unfair. If I lived in a country that dispossessed hundreds of thousands of people of their land, denied them full citizenship rights, and stuck them in squalid, remote camps, I wouldn't want to be judged by my government's actions.

Wait, never mind.

But all political humour aside, pretty much every Israeli I've known has partied like it's their job, and only held a job to subsidize their party habit. These people know how to have a good time. They think nothing of not going out until 2 a.m., and not coming home until 7. On a Tuesday. I'm not saying the entire nation of Israel is like this, just that there's a significant contingent. It's no surprise, then, that when they make party music, it's well above average.

Get Fresh Tuesday... er, Wednesday, well, it's pretty well Thursday by now

This is why I'm shit as a blogger. No consistency at all. I have no idea how some motherfuckers manage to post every day.

Anyway, onward and upward with some new newness.

1) "I'm Not Sorry" - thecocknbullkid, from YouTube via Tastes Like Caramel

Have I mentioned how I'm a total, unapologetic Anglophile yet? Well, here's yet another reason why I should just get my work visa in order and emigrate to the UK now. If Dave Jolicoeur from De La Soul and Sade had a daughter and raised her on a steady diet of early '80s British synthpop, she'd probably wind up sounding a lot like thecocknbullkid.

Britain has sent scores of female vocalists across the pond over the past half-decade -- Adele, Estelle, Duffy, Amy Winehouse -- but thecocknbullkid takes that vocal style and weds it to MIA's dancefloor-ready weirdness to create something that's next-level fun.

Apparently her debut EP has been out in the UK for a couple months now, but is due for a North American release early next month. Keep an eye out.

2) "Hyph Mngo" - Joy Orbison, from YouTube via The Guardian Music Blog

I'm not really sure what genre this is, the good folks at The Guardian seem to think it's some weird variant on dubstep, and they generally know more than me, so I'll accept that definition. I'm also not sure what "Hyph Mngo" means.

I am sure that this song makes me want to go to some dingy basement club, get lit up on bad drugs, and dance with my head in the speaker. It is, as they say in my native Scarborough, a blood claat big tune.

3) "Lil' Hipster Girl" - LMFAO, from Kickin' the Peanuts

A lot of people front like they hate hipsters. I don't. I'm jealous of them

Truth be told, I'm half way to hipster myself. I just don't have the body type/level of bravery required to pull off the outfits or the time and energy to dedicate to cool hunting. Or the necessary level of ironic detachment. If I could be a hipster, I would. I'm just too old, fat, and lazy.

LMFAO may be the ultimate hipster band. Forget Chromeo, forget ARE Weapons, this is it. The Alpha and Omega of hipstertronica. Their whole look and sound seems to be one giant, funny ironic pose. If you've ever made anti-Semitic wisecracks while chilling with a group of friends that's 90 per cent Jewish, or walked around acting like a tremendous jock douche as a send-up of tremendous jock douches, you understand what LMFAO are all about. It's like those jokes took on a life of their own and decided to start a band.

Not surprisingly, LMFAO are dope in small doses, but I'm not beating down doors to cop their full length debut Party Rock. I feel like if I had to listen to an entire album, I'd need to spend the next six hours listening to Fugazi or something equally earnest to restore balance.

Get Fresh Tuesday...

So, I wanted to do a weekly new music post, but I felt a little awkward just walking around jacking other music blogs for material.

Then I realized that that's how 90 per cent of music blogs operate, and I decided that if it's good enough for The Guardian Online, it's good enough for me. So, with no further ado, I present the inaugural edition of Get Fresh Tuesday.

1) "Huesca" - Model 500, from Feel My Bicep

I've only really started to "get" techno in the last three or four years. Before that, it was the electronic genre that I had the most trouble wrapping my head around. When I first got into electronic music in my late teens, techno just wasn't didn't have the same kick-your-ass visceral rush as drum n' bass, my genre of choice.

Now that I'm a little older, I can appreciate techno's less aggressive, less muscular vibe and get behind it's robot-funk.

"Huesca" is the newest output from Juan Atkins, one of techno's founding fathers. It's all sharp kicks, moody keys and squelching basslines. It's honestly got me so jacked that I can't breathe.

2) "Frankencottage" - Dark Mean, from YouTube via Guardian Music Blog

So, I found out about a band from Hamilton, Ontario, about 90 minutes from my house, via a blog from the UK. I don't know how I feel about this.

On one hand, it's always good to find out about fresh Canadian talent. On the other hand, I feel like sort of a chump that I found out abouty Dark Mean from them, and not the other way around.

Dark Mean play the sort of danceable indie rock that gets hipster kids dancing, but it's less The Rapture and more Joy Division. Like the almighty Division, Dark Mean manage to successfully parlay dancey, ass-shaking high hats, swirling guitars, and an overarching feeling of loneliness. Good stuff.

3) "Comme à la Télévision" - Omnikrom, from YouTube

This is the only one I didn't jack from another blog. Exclaim gave me a review copy of Comme à la Télévision, and not only was it the first unabashedly positive review I've written for them, it was one of the best albums I've heard in a long-ass time.

Omnikrom are in kind of weird spot right now. As far as I can tell, they're verging on mainstream popularity in Quebec, but don't even show up on the radar in the rest of North America. That's not entirely surprising, being as they only rhyme in French, but if English-speaking audience can manage to get behind Spanish-language reggaeton tracks, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to get into Omnikrom. If and when they tour English Canada, everybody needs to go see them.