5 Songs We Can't Stop Listening to is a collection of our newest favorite songs. And Every week we ask an artist that we love to tell us about the music they love.
Listen to the whole thing in the player below.
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1. Colony House picks “Take It With Me” by Tom Waits
This is 5 Songs We Can’t Stop Listening To. Every week we start off by asking a band that we love to tell us about a song that they love. Colony House comes to us all the way from Franklin, Tennessee. Today I’m in the studio with Caleb Chapman lead singer of Colony House.
Justin Barney: Hey Caleb thanks for being here. What is one song that you can not stop listening to?
Caleb Chapman: Um, that’s a tough question. I feel like uh a song that I, I can’t stop listening to is um a Tom Waits song called “Take It With Me”.
It’s just one of those, it's like you know in Mary Poppins when you jump into the chalk paintings or whatever, it, that song is like that to me where I want to be able to like jump into it you know and I wanna be able to see it visually because he paints such a clear picture of it I almost feel like I can. But I just, that’s when I always, it would never get old to me.
Justin Barney: Do you remember the first time you heard it?
Caleb Chapman: Yes. It was just a total random thing we were talking about Tom Waits and I was like obviously I know who he is but I haven’t spent much time with his music. And our producer was like “just listen to this song” and we stopped, we were in the middle of the session and we just stopped and we listened to the whole song and it was just yeah it was very uh potent memory, like I will always remember.
There’s memories where you know you remember exactly where you’re at when you first heard something and there’s not a lot of songs, I could probably list on like one hand songs that have done that where I was like “that’s undeniable.” I remember exactly where I was at when I heard that.
- “Take It with Me” was released in 1999 on Tom Wait’s album, “Mule Variations” released on Anti-.
- Listed if you like: Colony House, piano balladeering, sad sad sad songs
2. PWR BTTM – “Answer My Text”
For decades the quintessential image of puppy love has been the image of waiting by the phone. And there has been a ton of songs written about waiting by the phone.
Well texting has kind of changed that whole image. Now you know that they are always by a phone. If you text someone and it’s been a couple hours, odds are that they’ve probably seen it. And worst. They’ve ignored your text. If you are dating someone this can be the single most frustrating thing in a relationship.
Up until now, I know that there have been songs about phones, and songs about texting, but I’ve never heard a songs about this specific frustration.
If you’ve ever found yourself in that situation, which we all have, listening to this song and yelling the chorus is oh so satisfying.
Listen carefully to every word in this song, and for the love of god, if someone texts you tonight, answer it.
- PWR BTTM’s new album, “Pagent” will be released on May 12th, on Polyvinyl.
- Listen if you like: songs about specific relationship problems, Weezer, getting texted back
3. Jealous of the Birds – “Goji Berry Sunset”
This song has one of the greatest and underused “instruments” of all…the whistle. You don’t need to go to the store and buy anything, you don’t need a lifetime of lessons to learn it, you just need to pucker up your lips and blow.
So simple and human.
In this song her whistle adds this innocence to the song that is already innocent in itself. And you are going to have this whistle line stuck in your head all day.
- Jealous of the Birds new album, “Parma Violets” is out now.
- Listen if you like: Andrew Bird, Eden Ahbez, whistling in songs
4. Hollerado – “Julliet”
Justin Barney: This is 5 Songs We Can’t Stop Listening To and I’m here with Ken Sumka. Ken, what’s one song you can’t stop listening to?
Ken Sumka: Well you know my love of all things Canadian.
Justin Barney: I do. I am aware of this.
Ken Sumka: I, I like hockey, I like beer, I like poutine and I like...
Justin Barney: They’re very nice people.
Ken Sumka: So many, so many bands from Canada that I just adore.
Justin Barney: Yeah, agreed.
Ken Sumka: So, we have like this running thing where I get first dibs on any Canadian band that comes to town. So, Sam Roberts came through a couple of weeks ago and I went to go see them at Collectivos backroom. And we had dinner beforehand and I happened to get there early enough to catch the opener, which is rare for me.
Justin Barney: Yeah, okay.
Ken Sumka: Usually I, I miss the opener, catch the last couple songs. I was there from note one to the last note
Justin Barney: Yeah.
Ken Sumka: And it was this band called Hollerado that were playing now, were playing a song from their new album. But I had not heard of them or heard a note of their music before the show. And they were so fun, they were so poised and there were a lot of people in the audience that came specifically to see them.
They were probably there to see Sam as well, but they were there specifically to see Hollerado. And at one point they brought up a gal from the audience to do this song “Juliet”. Which again I’d never heard before.
Justin Barney: Yeah.
Ken Sumka: And they just nailed it. It was just this song that you just instantly heard and you’re like “that is a great pop song” and it's just been one of those songs that ever since, uh it’s got a fun video. You gotta go to YouTube and watch the video cause its, its just a great pop song and it's got a cool little message. So “Juliet” from Hollerado.
- “Juliette” was released in 2013 on Hollerado’s album, “Record in a Bag.”
- Listen if you like: Japandroids, anthemic songs, Canadians
5. Foxygen – “America”
For their first song since their, “Farewell Tour” the duo of Sam France and Jonathan Rado invited 34 musicians into a studio to create an orchestra in a pop song.
It’s a masterpiece of composition more than anything. Vocals are used discreetly over nearly five and a half minutes as the song gives way to a pastiche of musical styles from classical, to swing, piano balladeering and Brahms, it never stays in one direction, but pivots, jukes, and jumps from one style to another.
There really is nothing quite like this.
- A new Foxygen album has not officially been announced. Yet.
- Listen if you like: Scott Walker, The Beach Boys album “Pet Sounds”, a 34 piece orchestra
5. Elliot Moss - Closedloop
There are 60 million photos uploaded to Instagram every day. There are multiple 24 hour news channels. There is an uncountable amount of musicians who release full albums every day. And there is a new series on Netflix that you “have to watch” like every freaking week.
I think the feeling on most people’s mind is that the world just needs to slow down.
That’s what this song is about. In it’s lyrics, and in it’s vibe.
For the next 4:41 seconds countless Youtube videos, funny tweets, and serious news stories will be written, tweeted, uploaded and everything else, but lets just pause for five minutes here and let the world slow down.
- Elliot Moss’ new album, “Boomerang” will be out on April 28th, via Sounds Expensive.
- Listen if you like: Rhythm Lab, downbeat electronic music, slowing down
