Hear M. Ward's Latest, Hold Time

If you're one of the many who's all psyched up for Matt Ward's sold out show at the Palace Of Fine Arts In April, well you've got a while to wait. What's more, the new record isn't even going to hit the shelves until February 7th. So what can you do with your Ward fever in the meantime? Well, we would suggest heading over to NPR: For some unknown reason, the site has been chosen as the exclusive venue to stream Ward's new album in its entirety.

From we're sitting, the record's sounding pretty good. It's a solid dose of Ward's distinctive sound, complete with crunchy guitars, breathy multi tracked vocals, and rolling beats. Fans of Post War (which we most certainly are) will not be disappointed. If you just have to get something on your iPod, well, Stereogum's dug up at least one mp3 (featuring Zooey Deschanel) for you to stuff into the digital repository of your choice.

Stream: M. Ward - Hold Time (entire album)

We've Been Waiting: She and Him

We've been keeping an eye on the burgeoning M. Ward/Zooey DesChanel collaboration for quite a while: the combination of the two really seemed to be good to be true. So, to say that we were excited when we discovered a link over at Brooklyn Vegan to an mp3 from the forthcoming album would be an understatement. The song is exactly what we had hoped: Ward's killer instrumentation and production kicked in a slightly poppier direction, with Zooey's vocals doubled up and charming our socks off.

Soooooo....what could make us more excited than a free mp3? How about the fact that under our radar (we were admittedly ignorant that they were calling themselves "She And Him"), the pair booked a gig at GAMH for Noise Pop 2008! Tickets are on-sale now at tickets.com, but appear to be going quickly. We'll see you on March 2nd. In the meantime, enjoy the tune!

mp3: She and Him - Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?