Chris Glover, better known as Penguin Prison, is a New York-based indie artist/dance producer.  His music lies steeped in the four-to-the-floor beat that pulses throughout the NYC underground by night, and his lyrical dark humor shot with the side-stepping grin of fellow NYC dance luminaries Talking Heads and LCD Soundsystem.

Penguin Prison was kind enough to chat for a few moments and speak with Bestnewbands.com about NYC, Occupy Wall St, and the songwriting process of his self-titled album.

CC: You shot your video for “Don’t Fuck With My Money” at the Occupy Wall Street Protests.  Why?

PP: I thought some of the lyrics in the song shared the same sentiment of people who were upset with the economic trauma our country has been in.

CC: On the topic of videos, I noticed that you have some YouTube videos of you playing your songs on an acoustic guitar.  Does you songwriting process normally begin in such a stripped-down-manner?

PP: The best way for me to write songs actually is in my sleep.  I sleep with a tape recorder next to my bed and I wake up in the middle of the night and sometimes have melodies in my head.  I record them into the tape recorder and go back to sleep.  Then I wake up the next day, listen to them and try to come up with a song.

I don’t really sit with an acoustic guitar and write.  I just try to come up with stuff, just melodies, and build instrumentation around that.

CC: And then how do you approach the lyrical content?

PP: I try to make my lyrics sort of a mixture of serious and funny.  I always try to be a bit sarcastic with my lyrics - serious subject matter but dealt with in a funny way so people can have a laugh.  I have a very dark humor way of doing it.

CC: Are there any other songwriters who have influenced this dark humor approach you have?

PP: Yeah.  The Talking Heads. LCD Soundsystem.  Radiohead.  Radiohead always has those really sarcastic lyrics where you read them on paper and they don’t necessarily fit with the way the music sounds.

CC: Are you a sarcastic person?

PP: Yeah.  I definitely have a sense of humor and I think people appreciate humor in art.  Like I said always try to have a mix of humor and seriousness.  I think that’s a good mix.

The lineup for this years Coachella Festival is out and, as you would expect, it's a great one. Headlined by The Black Keys, Radiohead, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog. The lineup includes also includes a lot of our favorites here at BestNewBands.com including: M83, Florence + the Machine, Neon Indian, Dawes, WU LYF, tUnE yArDs, Childish Gambino, Gary Clark Jr.,  and our Best New Band of 2011 Grouplove.

The recession's over, so get your tickets now before they sell out.

You might remember Save the Clocktower from a BestNewBands.com feature several months ago reviewing their album Carousel. Or you might remember the name from Back to the Future. Either way, they're a Chicago-based band worth remembering for a rainy day or otherwise. I spoke to all three members on the phone last week, and we managed to keep our conversation just under the level of raucous cacophony as they provided thoughtful and often hilarious answers to my questions. Read on to find out more about their frequent genre-bending, past and future recording techniques, and their thoughts on the music industry's game-changers. Be sure to sample the two tracks "They" and "You Got Me" via the Soundcloud links below, and don't miss the music video by 80's idol Robert Palmer that the trio finds inspirational!

Laurel Kathleen: You have a show this weekend at Beat Kitchen and then you’re making your Madison, Wisconsin debut on the 17^th. Do you have anything special planned for either show?

Greg Newton: For both of these shows, I think we’re going to do similar sets: it’ll be the same bank of songs, but maybe change the order. I think what we always try to do is just try to play the best songs that fit together well. For this set in particular, it starts out really big, then goes psychedelic, then gets upbeat.

Jimmy Shenk: I’m going to chime in too: when we first started playing a lot of shows, we had these promoters put people on these bills who were really good, DJs that were really famous but hip hop DJs and dubstep DJs, which I don’t know why they thought to throw us on the bill. This was in the beginning, when we were trying to tailor our sets to audiences we were playing for, so we were playing a lot of our electronic sets. Recently we decided to say “screw it” and just play our best stuff. I think the set now is really strong. We’ve been writing a lot of new stuff: with Carousel we kind of dial those songs in live really well.

LK: I read on your Facebook page that you’re already working on the next album. Any teasers about themes or production techniques?

Sean Paras: It’s different where we’re still doing a lot fo the recording and production on our own, but for mixing and additional recording we’ll be going to another studio in Chicago. The main difference is from a technical stand point: Carousel was procuced on Ableton Live. This next album will be Pro Tools.

Greg Newton: But also thematically and musically, it’s still in the works. But it’s taking a bit of a different direction: it’s more soulful, a little more upbeat and active. A little bit more of an edge.

Jimmy Shenk: I think it’s the best thing we’ve done: I’m kind of jumping out of my seat when I think about it. It’s pretty “next level” as far as what we’ve done. I like the fact that we've evolve slightly. We have ten tracks, not finalized but everything is laid out in our heads. We’re constantly adding, editing, recording, re-recording. But what we have now is pretty awesome…and I think that Chris Brown could do a dance off for these songs. But I’m not a fan of his.

photo courtesy of Brendan Shanley

LK: What’s one thing that Save the Clocktower has or does to make you stand out from other bands in Chicago?

JS: Good question. For me personally, I don’t know what genre we are. It’s hard to describe what we do, because I don’t know what it is. It’s a little bit of a lot of stuff. But I think we’re really different from other bands in Chicago: we can play with a lots of different types of bands which is fun for us.

GN: Yeah I mean, what people have said before is that engineers have told us “people came up and asked if we’re from the west coast". I think it’s because we have a huge mash-up of influences, and a lot of Chicago bands don’t have as many layers or use as many effects as we do on our tracks. We just have a bigger and dreamier sound.

JS: Loyal Divide is a really cool band, but they're a bit heavier than us I think. Their live show in particular: they do some hard rock stuff that we don’t get into. Hearing their latest album, they got into a mash-up of electronic and songwriting. They’re a bit more intense, which is cool.

LK: Who do you think are the “game-changers” right now in your own genre or otherwise?

JS: Uhh. That’s a good question. We really like this kid out of Chicago named Curtis Evans, he’s a really cool dude and he’s a folk musician. I don’t know, I hope that he would be a game changer. He’s a great guy. As far as who’s breaking ground in music…well I mean I’m going to be really lame and say Lady Gaga. But she's doing her own thing. That’s not something I would go into my car and listen to, but I guess it’s something to mention. I listen to a lot of old stuff.

GN: I know Sean and I -and even Jimmy as well- we’ve all seen Radiohead a few times. As an example, a band that’s constantly progressing and changing from album to album. There are plenty of bands out there.

JS: There’s this band called Empire of the Sun from Australia that came out with a record that kind of blew the faces off of people. I saw them at Lolla, and it was this kind of psychedelic Prince concert. There’s just the one guy now: it was originally two guys and one kind of went AWOL. They were on to something, and they’re really cool. They do funky electronic, and great songwriting. I mean, I know we don’t really listen to Katy Perry. The most #1’s on an album since Thriller...that kind of amazes me. I listen to a lot of older stuff. I hope there are a lot of game changers. Who knows what will happen, or where it will go?

photo courtesy of Lauren Hermann

LK: Who are the game-changers in Chicago right now?

JS: The Sea and Cake, they’re kind of legend. Eleventh Dream Day is kind of an underground band that not many people give props to. White Mystery is this brother and sister duo, and we met Alex White at a party and she is a really cool chick. She’s like straight out of 1973; she’s awesome. There’s this band called Cealed Kasket: they’re kind of KISS meets Motley Crue meets Parliament Funkadelic.

LK: What’s one thing that you’d change about the current music industry?

SP: Ohhh I don’t know. For us, we do it all. Everything we do we don’t really get too much assistance from management companies, or PR companies. We do everything on our own.

JS: I don’t know, are people open minded to work with a lot of artists? I know the economy is really struggling so it’s a “who can get to the finish line first?” situation and it also doesn’t hurt if some sweet PR company wants to put you on you roster. I wish we had more PR companies who loved us. We work really hard, we practice all the time, and sometimes you run into people who aren’t always as hard working and they’ll take awhile to get back to you….maybe if people had a little bit more urgency because of the state of the music industry. But we work really hard, and that’s something that we really pride ourselves on. And the three of us have been really close friends for the last twenty years and we’re very passionate so it almost becomes an obsession. We want it, and we really like to do this. I’m really itching to get on the road. We’ve done some traveling, but being able to come out to LA is one of our goals. Being able to travel around in general.

LK: Who are your dream tour mates?

JS: Somebody who’s not an arrogant jerk. A band that’s kind of worked their way up and is humble, someone not put together by a producer or something. Someone like us who has had to work for it, so they’re still down to earth. They haven’t lost their sense of reality. Also someone who’s not going to drink all the free beer that the venue gave us. A ton of people: for Guns N' Roses to reunite and go on tour and see what happened. It wouldn’t be very fun, but it’d be cool. I just want to go on tour and whoever wants to come with can just have fun, smile, and promote the hell out of the show. Like if we went out with the Bryan Jonestown Massacre.

LK: Any closing remarks?

JS: This third record... it could be pretty big. So watch out world! That’s my new t-shirt line.

Save the Clocktower's latest album Carousel is now available for listen and purchase on their Bandcamp page. If you're in the Madison area of Wisconsin, you can catch them live at The Sett on September 17th or at The Whistler in their hometown of Chicago on October 13th. For more information on their upcoming releases and tour dates, please follow Save the Clocktower on Facebook or Twitter.

With one of the best new indie-pop albums of the year on her first English speaking record, Ximena Sariñana has a lot going for her. After a dazzling performance at Outside Lands where she won many new fans, she unfortunately started to lose her voice. But that didn’t stop the singer from powering through her illness and chatting with Bestnewbands.com and was one of our favorite interviews from the weekend.

Daniel Kohn: You said this is the second festival you’ve ever played. How do you think you performance went over with the large audience who saw your set?

Ximena Sariñana: I think it went really well. It was really cold though and I think that’s part of the reason why I’m losing my voice. But it awesome, I loved that there was a great turnout, especially at an early hour.

DK: You have a very eclectic, diverse sound that comes with your wide array of influences. How would you describe how the music from the record translates to your live show?

XS: It becomes a bit grittier in the live show. We play with a lot more energy. I’ve always been a fan of going to watch rock bands so I’ve always liked being energetic on stage. The music requires a lot of precision, so there are a lot of parts that need to be played and I’m doing a lot of stuff too. I’m kind of like a nerd with my band, making sure everything is perfect.

DK: Off stage, you are very mild-mannered and chill, while on stage you are a completely different person. Who and what do you channel while performing that brings out that side of you?

XS: Ha! I’m just chill now because I’m losing my voice. I’m usually much peppier, trust me. But to answer the question, I’ve always loved Bjork. Every time you’re going to see her, there’s going to be something different and it’s going to be unexpected. I really tried to make this record and the live set sound independent from each other and different than what I was used to playing live before. Radiohead is also one of my all-time favorite performers and I like the dynamic of very upbeat songs. I’m going through an upbeat phase and I want all my songs to be fast and loud.

DK: Do you usually play with a multi-piece band like today?

XS: Unfortunately not usually. This is how I want the band to be size-wise, but for budget reasons, we always end up with way less instruments. I usually play duo and trio shows but those are also cool because you can do other stuff and experiment with different setups and see where you can take them.

DK: Did having a full-band fill out the sound and make it easier for you to perform?

XS: I don’t know if it’s much easier because you are directing everyone. I had to be way more concentrated and a lot more could go wrong with so much more stuff going on. I actually get to play more stuff with a full-band when it would seem like I would play less.

DK: What’s the best thing you’ve discovered about San Francisco on this brief trip?

XS: I discovered this park (Golden Gate Park), which I’ve never seen before. It feels like you’re in a forest but is in the middle of a city and that’s so cool.

A veteran of the Los Angeles music scene, Nick Goose has finally taken off on his own, releasing his first solo EP, Change Please. It’s not just a clever title for an album. In this case, it’s an artist taking a chance on a new sound, but it is the first step on embarking on a new adventure as a solo artist.

Start your weekend off right with a selection of tunes from this week’s featured artists on BestNewBands.com.

“The Dead Dog” - Portugal. The Man

Monica Christoffels previewed Portugal. The Man’s set at the Snowball Music Festival in Colorado last weekend.

Monica wrote, “Since forming PTM in 2004, and having lost and gained some band members in the process, the band has released six albums, five EPs and multiple accolades, including Gourley’s ‘Best Vocalist of the Year’ award from AP in 2008. Last April, PTM signed on to Atlantic Records - they’ve officially ‘made it’ in the music world.

“American Ghetto, Portugal. The Man’s latest album, is chock full of political commentary, from connotations of corporate chastising in the opening track 'The Dead Dog' to my favorite, the closing 'When The War Ends,' in which Gourley croons, ‘I’ve got soulful days to counter evil ways / when the war ends / we’ll wonder what it was about...’ That’s a message this progressive/liberal/hippie/idealist can certainly get behind.”

Read the rest of Monica’s post here.

Welcome to the horror show, starring seven-piece Norwegian film enthusiasts, Tôg. Fronted by Lars Christian Olsen, the mysterious and enigmatic maestro cites philosophy, as much an inspiration as other music. Moody and infectious with some elements of house, the act will be playing five shows at SXSW in Austin, before playing the Northeast of the U.S.

I talked with Lars about philosophy, music and of course, the challenge of fame (for both of us, of course).

Kristina Villarini: What is the inspiration for Tôg?

Lars Christian Olsen: We're inspired mostly by film music, different electronic music and pop. Our main inspirations are: Under Byen, New Order, !!!, Radiohead, Familjen.

Electronic/dance-pop heroes Innerpartysystem are not going to have a quiet 2011. Their EP, Never Be Content will be released on February 22nd, and it's really something special. The band: Patrick Nissley, Jared Piccone and Kris Barman, are also in the process of finishing a new full-length record, which is due this year as well. Their video for the single “American Trash” debuted on Filter magazine's website on January 25th and it's a visually stimulating, but sardonic pop culture commentary that you can't help but tap your feet to.

But behind the synthesizers, the remixes, the mix-tapes, the free EPs and everything else... Who ARE these guys? I talked to Kris Barman about where they're going, the motivation for new records, and if gig will ever get old.

Kristina Villarini: Before we get going, I just want to say that on the day that everyone was talking about Lady Gaga's release, I got my hands on your EP (early), and it's tremendous. I couldn't help but want to play it for everyone and then try to shake some sense into them.

Kris Barman: (Laughs) Well, thanks!

KV: What was the motivation for that video “American Trash?”

KB: The entire video concept came from (Stephen) Penta, but I think he kinda fell into what ended up being the final cut. The first idea was doing a glossy, artistic video with a bunch of symbols like “On To The Next One” by Jay-Z and Swizz Beatz. But, as we kept going, we just realized how great the performances were. The dancers in the video, they really made it something.

KV: Is the song/video a reflection of how you guys are feeling right now?

KB: It's an artistic statement definitely... But it's also just that song. We have plenty of songs that are also not so blatant or critical.