Laura Marling is the queen of fixing you with her eyes and leaving you unsettled, all the while weaving a story of intimate broken moments with her phantom voice. Her Manic and I album was nearly the entirety of my playlist for last winter, so I was a bit surprised that I missed this lovely shadowplay video for her song New Romantic. (I especially like the Peter Pan ending.)
I've watched this video about ten times since it arrived in our inbox yesterday. The song is "Safe as Houses" by aKING, a South African band that apparently has an absolute genius with video-making AND lyric-writing. Example:
"Safe as houses, tuck me in. Daylight waits for no man.
You're still young and breathing's easy, suck it in.
Oh what a waste, this facade.
What a pity we've come this far..."
So click play and follow the futile exploits of a king trying in vain to hold his cardboard kingdom together as it collapses in the rain. None of his motley crew of subjects comes to his rescue, naturally. Maybe we can help him out.
It's an injection of pure happiness, straight to our hearts!
But do you know what would make it even *better*? If you guys sang along to it, with Mister Munroe's new super-amazing lyrics. It's... sing-along-a-xkcd!
The challenge is this: send us a video file of yourself, singing the xkcd Song of Awesomeness. And we'll mash 'em up, all in a bowl, and produce (with a flourish, and a garnish of unbridled joy), a video of all the clips together.
It's an xkcd music video - and we want YOU in it!
Send your clip babies to [email protected] Use mime! And props! And do your happy dance thing! The world is YOURS, kids! (don't you just love it?)
..Egg bank. This makes me ridiculously happy. Stupidly, even. Because if this little trinket rests inside the walls of your abode, suddenly your interior feels magical and wild: there is a NEST in your living room! Full of tiny jingling coins! Maybe I'm easily pleased, but this is obscenely adorable.
Another lovely towering obelisk of aural fixations, just for you. All downloads are free and legal and delivered from our inbox to your hungry hands, hurrah!
Ravens and Chimes - January I love, love this song this week. Check out more on MySpace.
Pop Levi - Never Never Love
Pop Levi has a neat gimmicky multi-window YouTube video you can see here and here. (Open up both links at once.) You can hear more Pop Levi on MySpace.
elodieO - Crazy
Check out more of the little French singer at her site.
The Puppini Sisters - Spooky Check them out on MySpace.
Rosie Thomas and Xiu Xiu and a bandwagon of folk have climbed aboard forOf Great and Mortal Men: 43 Songs For 43 Presidencies, a three-disc album with a song for each of the 43 presidents of the United States. The track listing has songs like "Warren Harding: An Army Of Pompous Phrases" and "Herbert Hoover: Woe Is A Spoon-Shaped Heart" -- I think this might just be the kind of album they should hand out in schools.
It sounds bizarre and awesome, hits streets September 9th, and you can find more info about it here.
The only thing that 43 Presidencies is missing is this little ditty by Jonathan Coulton, built to help you remember all the presidents and how long they served:
We posted the link to this video yesterday, but it bears repeating because we think David Ford is lovely-- and we have a pair of tickets to one lucky winner if you happen to be in Los Angeles on July 10, where he's playing at the Hotel Café. Just leave your full name in the comments and we'll randomly draw one lucky winner to put on the guest list. Good luck!
Maybe all that dance music was a bit much. Maybe it was a bit too early for such a ruckus. I understand.
(Well, I don't really, it's never too early.)
But! We proffer to you this tiny dreamy gem from Northern Ireland, from a little band called The Sleeping Years. If your edges are sharp, let it soften you. If your day is hardened, let it cushion your fall into night.
Sleepy? Tired? Having trouble getting your head going this morning? Is caffeine not doing its usual trick of setting fire to your synapses?
Enter: Woodhands.
In fact, enter specifically, this little ditty by Woodhands, called I Wasn't Made For Fighting. It's not for creatures who don't like thumpy thumpy dance music or for the faint of heart-- the album's called Heart Attack, after all. But, barring these two caveats, I guarantee that this tiny three-minutes-and-fifty-two-seconds will send a little dancy jolt to your blood.
Nine days ago we posted a contest, that went a little something like this:
We'd like to encourage you to take the challenge. Start a blog somewhere with your 1-minute song or 100-word story or 1 hour drawing or a photograph a day, and we'll post it up on the Fabulist.
But! Just because the contest is over, doesn't mean you should stop making art, no sir. I hardily and whole-heartedly encourage you to go forth in the world and continue with your weekly art babies. If not now, when? (This has been a message from the Fabulist Campaign For More Neat Art Stuff That We Like And Stuff.)
And now, without further ado, here's the total list of the Minute Minute participants:
We've teamed up with the lovely band From Bubblegum To Sky to do a giveaway! Hurray! Here's the goodies:
The prize pack for the give-away consists of a Drop Card of A Soft Kill (the full album), a beautifully designed t-shirt, a button, a signed poster, and CDs of From Bubblegum To Sky’s two previous releases Me and Army and The Two French Boys and Nothing Sadder Than Lonely Queen.
Post your favorite kind of bubblegum-- or candy if you're not a bubblegum fan!-- in the comments, and we'll randomly pick a winner by Friday!
And a bonus: here's a few tracks from A Soft Kill.
It's the junk drawer of Fabulist posts. All that nummy good stuff we want to share, and we throw them in a big pile for you to untangle. Like tic-tacs, these links are better in handfuls.
We love when we hear new music we like. It falls out of the sky like raindrops, or like a ladybug getting caught in your sleeve, unexpected. What's that? Some new tendril of sonic wonder has happened upon us, to bring us melodic-related-joy? Why yes, yes it has.
This time it was dear friend Kinzli who turned us on to Sleeping States, a little band out of Bristol. Everything about them is earnest and simple and gentle. Just like raindrops.
washthis on 
