This week’s track is Murder to Excellent by Jay-Z & Kanye West off of their Watch The Throne album. I’m still working my way through all the tracks on this new album so this is picked solely on how catchy it sounds. I think the lead single on this may be No Church in the Wild which features Frank Ocean (who makes two appearances on the album), but I haven’t heard any of the tracks on the radio yet.

This week’s track is We Swarm by The Glitch Mob, off of Drink The Sea. Over the last few years I’ve heard a lot of Glitch Mob tracks in passing and in friends cars, or at Burning Man, but it wasn’t until I went and saw them at a show about a month ago that I took a serious listen to their music. This track, We Swarm, is a killer glitch/electronica song. Opening with strained synths and breaking in to a bounce after that, the real hook for me comes in at about 2:15 where a syncopated back beat comes that’s joined with an explosive percussive sound at 3:05. Listen to it in your car with the volume up and the windows down and you won’t regret it.

This week’s track is Freak You Out, by Blip Blip Beep off of Like Track Stars. I saw BBB perform at Mercury Lounge in NYC a few weeks back with a friend as the second band in a three act lineup. Super energetic and straight up electropop their sound is super fun and poppy, with a dash of rock. This song was (I think) their closer in their set which included an amazing electrodub cover of Michael Jackson’s Beat It. Like Track Stars is definitely worth checking out, it’s better than their prior EPs, and this track is the most fun out of all of them.

This week’s track is Escape 700 by The Chemical Brothers, off of the Hanna soundtrack. I haven’t heard much from The Chemical Brothers in a while and haven’t seen this movie, but the album randomly crossed the desks of Track of the Week. Escape 700 is a pulsing, yet brooding electronica track, perhaps best described as electronica/house meets Middle Eastern beats. There’s probably a whole label out there that specializes in this genre of music. Of all the tracks on the Hanna soundtrack, this is maybe the one that’s most “song”-like, as many of the others are ambient mood setting types of sound. It’s a great track in an otherwise good album.

This week’s track is I Want the World to Stop by Belle and Sebastian off of Belle and Sebastian Write About Love. I’ve had this song in my library for a while and have kept putting off sending it out, mostly because it feel out of my Recently Added list. I’ve never been a huge Belle and Sebastian fan and Write About Love their first album I own. When I first heard of them in the early 2000s, folks might have described them as folk music but as I listen to them now after the indie revolution (is that a thing?) I would probably call them indie pop. The sound of this specific track harks back to The 5th Dimension’s Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In but at a slower BPM with a somewhat mid-late-60s sound.

This week’s track is I Put a Spell on You by Nina Simone, mixed by MiM0SA. There’s so much to say, yet so little. I think the best way to approach this song is historically. Originally recording by Screamin’ Jay Hawkin in 1956, then covered by various people over the years in various styles. From Nina Simone in 1965, to  CCR in 1968, to the first dance versions by Sonique in 2000. This week’s track is a 2010 remix of Nina Simone’s take, mixing Simone’s classic vocals and haunting intro with banging dubstep breaks. It’s worth taking a run through all the covers of the song, they’re all so different and specific.

This week’s track is The Bay by Metronomy off of English Rivera. Surprisingly, this is Metronomy’s first appearance on TOTW. I’d originally come across them with a free iTunes download of Heartbreak from their Nights Out EP. Half lo-fi, half electronica, they have a very unique and original sound that is hugely different from album to album. The Bay may not where you want to be right now as it’s the middle of May and it’s raining, but hopefully this little track will help get you through the day. As seems to be the tradition on track of the week, The Bay is the most upbeat and high tempo track from the album. I’m not entirely sure what the song is about, but it’s totally possible it’s about the San Francisco Bay Area since the lyrics are quite clear what it’s not.

This week’s track is Meet Around 10 by Film School off of Fission. A local SF band, I first heard Film School at Cafe du Nord tagging along for a 40 in 52 show about a month ago (back in the long forgotten days of when I wasn’t a work robot). They rocked the set with confetti, a laser light show as well as glow sticks (felt very 2000). Meet Around 10 was the last song before their encore and it’s interesting to hear the recorded version versus the live version. I think the YouTube of the live version is taken off the soundboard so you don’t get the environmental rock-out-feel that the band has live. The track is super fun and the album is a bit lo-fi, a bit rock, with a healthy dose of production.

This week’s track is Raise Your Weapon (Switch Fusion Remix), by Deadmau5. Track of the week has had a dearth of trance and house, so in an attempt to go back to some of track of the week’s roots, this week’s track is a great little melodic garage/grime song. The original Deadmau5 track is much more house-y and progressive and moves idly through the lyrics over a set of synths and pianos (with some breaks, too). The Switch Fusion remix pumps up the BPM, throws on a bunch of dubstep love, and shortens the track up. Something to get you moving on an otherwise hum-drum Tuesday.