End of February!

Vola & The Oriental Machine - Turning Turning

Genre: indie rock, new wave
Song style: catchy song reminiscent of the old The Killers (+ some Interpol)

I'm starting to become a big fan of this band. This comes off their good (but pretty experimental) 2009 album "Sa-Ka-Na no Electric Device," which I highly recommend. For some reason, some of their older songs really really sound like Interpol to me (for example, this older song). I really like the singer's silly dancing in this video, it's so Japanese but really suits the mood of the song. Every so often when I had free time, I would go up to the top floor of Kyoto's Loft, where there was an HMV. You would think a major CD store would "cater to the mainstream" but they always had sections of indie music to sample around the store, and that's how I discovered this band. I sometimes feel like the Japanese music industry is more open to new things - the countdown is always filled with pop, hip hop, rock, electronica, oldies (enka), and even joke songs, versus America's which is predominantly club music and country. Perhaps Japan's music industry is in such transition that it doesn't have to be set in its ways. And Japanese cds and dvds are so expensive that only people truly passionate about their music can afford to make these purchases that put the bands into the charts.