I’ve been gorging myself on new music of late, and it’s not been hitting me in the wallet like it used to.

The internet is my friend, basically – I’m devoting time deliberately to trawling the web for new music, and I’m managing to hit the jackpot with alarming frequency… so in the interest of sharing the wealth, here’s what’s been really doing it for me lately:

the Dresden Dolls
I can’t really think of a better description than their own; “Brechtian punk cabaret”.

MC Lars
Lo-fi rap. The sound of my demographic to a tee, but set to the breaks of bedroom hip-hop. His Piebald sampling iGeneration is an instant classic. He really should hurry up and release it soon.

Thriftshop XL
Cut-up, mash-up, bastard pop… Whatever you call it, the music stays the same. Take two (or more) pop songs. Using your computer-aided mixing skills, play both at once. It’s a technical skill only, but add in a dash of warped humour and wicked comic timing, and you get Glasgow’s own star of the scene. Of course, there’s another Glasgow star too, McSleazy – but he’s not nearly as good.

Dugong
Dugong play indie-rock, emo, post-rock… whatever the current label of choice for this kind of thing is, I still love it to pieces. They’ve been on the go a while now, but only recently have I become aware of the Bombed Out Records website, where you can download a lot of their stuff, and a lot of other stuff too.

Deserving of a special mention is Transmission 3000, a lovely website which exists solely as a repository for hour upon hour of live recordings of bands I really like… all handily split into single-song MP3s, filed by band and by gig, and supplied completely free of charge to anybody who wants to take the time to download them. They’ve got Bluetip, Rocket From the Crypt, Burning Airlines, Fugazi, Girls Against Boys… fantastic stuff.