Foreign look: South Korea

CNBlue - 외톨이야 (I'm a loner)

Genre: pop-rock
Song style: catchy and swingy

My friend showed me this song several times over the last year at school and I really liked it, but it never really penetrated into my music collection. But in the past couple of days I've been looking into Korean pop because of my impending trip to Seoul (which means expected clubbing as well!) and I've rediscovered this great indie band. They originally debuted in Japan, but then came back to their home country of South Korea with this popular debut song. I like the intro of this video too, where you can hear snippeted variations of the song.

Foreign look: America

Alert - not a Japanese band!

I know this is supposed to be a Japanese indies blog, but every so often I'll take a look at other countrys' music. Wasn't intending on doing two posts in ~3 hours, but was grooving to this song too hard and couldn't stop! Take this as an "unofficial" post. This song also fits in too well with Tokyo Jihen's groove. So let me present:

Light.Sweet.Crude - Random song

Genre: bluesy indie rock
Song style: chill, rockin', jazzy

See what I mean? Sort of along the style of Tokyo Jihen. This band actually has 1.5 Japanese members, which sorta makes it valid for this blog. And the .5 is my sister, plucking at the violin at the very right! A cutie right? :-) It sounds almost shamisen-like. This band got their start around November and I've been going to their shows in NY (this one at the Local 269) to support them. You can hear my dorky voice in the beginning of the video. I had a fun time chilling with this band, getting to see their practices, and traveling with them around the city.