Welcome back to another mammoth round of Tuesdays With Lazerbeak! This week’s post is absolutely teeming with highlights, so I’m just going to jump right into it. Last week Pitchfork world premiered the brand new P.O.S video for “Faded” off of his Chill, dummy full-length. It was created, directed, edited, and vizually effected by our good friend James Gundersen who once again absolutely knocked it out of the park. Huge shouts to Lady Midnight on the guest vocals and GAYNGS for letting Stef mess with the “Faded High”stems (the opposite of shouts to Pitchfork for continuing to use Justin Vernon’s name as click bait in their promotion of this song after we asked them not to and fully explained the GAYNGS sample). Please check out the video and pass it around if you get a second.
Leg 2 of the Chill, dummy tour is beginning to wrap up and head back home to the snow-covered state of Minnesota. Here’s a quick photo recap of the past week throughout California and the Southwest. All the homies showed up in LA.
Stef and Murs at the Zia Records signing.
Stef, Fundo, and Dwynell will be in Durango tonight (3/14) and Denver on Wednesday night (3/15) before heading back to Minneapolis for the huge Chill, dummy LP release party at First Avenue this Friday. Tickets are nearly gone for this one, so if you’re planning on rolling through you should grab a few of those bad boys right HERE before it’s too late.
Huge news on the international front as well! Yesterday we announced a partnership with Scroobius Pip and Speech Development Records to physically release Chill, dummy throughout the UK and Europe. Check out Stef and Pip backstage in LA making it all official and keep an eye out for the album to hit record shelves on April 28th.
Sims flew back home from the West Coast leg of tour this past weekend to open up for Atmosphere at the brand new and insanely beautiful Palace Theatre in St. Paul. Here’s just a few pics of that mayhem. Soooooooo tight. Top one courtesy of Nate Ryan, not sure on the bottom one (apologies to that unknown photog).
Speaking of Sims and Europe (SEGUE!!!), he’ll be headed overseas in just a few weeks for his first ever headlining dates in the UK and Europe. He’ll be bringing DJ Fundo along for the ride and hitting a ton of cities along the way. Check out the full list of dates below and grab your tickets right HERE.
And here’s a quick bonus tour photo of Sims and our friend Sean Anonymous last weekend at their show in Fargo, recreating the cover of Fargo’s weekly paper. I’d say they nailed it.
Dessa has been hard at work getting everything together for her two huge shows with the MN Orchestra in April (heads up, tickets are almost gone – grab the last ones HERE), and she just announced a super sweet residency with New York’s WNYC in the month of May. She’ll be the Greene Space’s first-ever Artist In Residency and is planning some crazy nights of music, science, and drinking. Click HERE for details.
Super pumped to announce Doomtree’s recent involvement with our hometown pro hockey team the Minnesota Wild. The Wild approached us and a few other locals artists (ahem, SOUL ASYLUM) to reinterpret their fight song anthem “The State Of Hockey.” They’ll be rolling out each new cover song daily as part of a charity-based Pledge campaign, and we kicked things off yesterday with our rap take on the 3/4 Irish chant. Sims, Stef, and Mike on the raps, Beak on the beat. Check out the new song and learn more about the whole campaign right HERE.
One final random Doomtree-related news item: The Current is going to be throwing their annual Rock The Cradle party on April 9th at the Walker Art Center and I’m honored to be involved. This thing is all about parents and their young children getting out of the house, taking over a fancy art museum, and learning all sorts of cool artsy stuff. This year I’ll be posted up on the top floor with all of my beat machines letting kids bang out and teaching them the fundamentals of a true LAVA BANGER. Should be a great time. There’s about one billion other sweet things for them to do throughout the museum too. Check out all the details right HERE.
And with that, let’s get right into another round of Bonus Jams. Super excited for the new Craig Finn album to drop in just a few weeks. It’s his best work yet and this new music video for his latest single “God In Chicago” is def the best video he’s ever made. Can’t wait for people to hear the whole album. By far an early contender for album of the year.
Craig Finn – “God In Chicago”
Open Mike Eagle just dropped a sweet video for a song off of his recent collaboration with producer Paul White. Check out the animated video below.
Open Mike Eagle & Paul White – “Dang Is Invincible”
I just discovered Forest Swords. I don’t know much about it/them?, but this new “The Highest Flood” single is totally blowing my mind. Can’t wait to check out the new album when it comes out this spring.
Forest Swords – “The Highest Flood”
Sims just put me up on this new project from Low Steppa & Skapes, knowing how hard I’ve fallen for house music recently. This track KNOCKS SO HARD.
Low Steppa & Skapes – “The Horn”
Local rapper RADIO AHLEE just released this video for his song “S T A T I C” and it’s great. Bonus: it was shot at the MN State Fair – which is an institution around these parts of the world.
RADIO AHLEE – “S T A T I C”
Chastity Brown is gearing up to drop her next album with Red House Records, and everything I’ve heard from it so far is absolutely killer. Got a chance to see her perform at the soft opening of the Palace last week and her and the band slayed it. Can’t wait to hear the whole thing. Here’s “Wake Up” in the meantime.
Chastity Brown – “Wake Up”
And lastly, the ever-ambitious Toki Wright has just announced his new At The Speed Of Life project. For the next seven days Toki will be creating, producing, writing, and recording one song per day and releasing them as he goes. I love it. Here’s Day 1’s track “In Gods We Trust.” Off to a great start already. Make sure to check back daily right HERE to watch the project come together in real time. I’ll do a recap next week as well.
Toki Wright – “In Gods We Trust”
BAM! That does it for Bonus Jams this week. I want to give a ginormous shout out to Laid Back Lou and Crab Man Cam for turning THREE YEARS OLD this week. Good lord time flies. The last three years have been filled with sheer terror, absolute chaos, and total awesomeness, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. I love these two so much and have been especially floored the last few months as they’ve really stepped up their friendship bond in tons of new ways. JAMMY BOYZ 4 LYFE.
Also, shouts to MN United FC soccer team for hooking our entire Party of Five up with tickets to the home opener on Sunday. We braved the snowstorm and posted up (for at least 10 minutes) to cheer on the team – our reactions are more based on the weather than the final score just an FYI. Can’t wait to go to more games this summer when the sun is out and the beer is flowing.
Alright, that does it for this week’s post. I hope you all have a wonderful week. Looking forward to seeing a ton of you out at the P.O.S show this Friday. Otherwise next Tuesday for sure!
— Beak
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