Song of the day: The Magnetic Fields/"Take Ecstasy with Me"

My friend Mia recently gave me a great new song from !!!, "Take Ecstasy with Me," which I didn't realize until last weekend was a cover of a song by The Magnetic Fields. The song, from The Magnetic Fields' excellent album Holiday, was recently added to the Rhapsody library through our new deal with Merge Records, along with a bunch of other highly-recommended Magnetic Fields albums (Charm of the Highway Strip, Get Lost and more). You can click here to hear The Magnetic Fields' original via Rhapsody, then click here to listen to !!!'s more dance-oriented version via the Touch & Go website. Enjoy the music -- and have a great weekend.

Song of the day: Secret Machines/"Road Leads Where It's Led"

When the Secret Machines released their album Now Here is Nowhere in early 2003, it was available as a digital-only exclusive through Rhapsody and other online music services for several months. The band and its label, Reprise Records, were trying to build buzz, and the album's psychedelic pop pulled in a lot of people at the company -- including me. My favorite song on the album was "The Road Leads Where It's Led," which was recently re-released on a new Secret Machines EP that also includes covers of Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks" and Bob Dylan's "Girl from the North Country." Anyway, I checked out the new EP this morning and thought you might enjoy it, too.

Song of the day: Nouvelle Vague/"Love Will Tear Us Apart"

What, you ask, if Ian Curtis had grown up in France, played with a band from Brazil, and was a woman? Well, it might sound something like this cover of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart."

Nouvelle Vague is French pop project that set out to cover punk and new wave songs of the late 1970s and early 1980s, re-imagining the songs as bossa nova and sixties-influenced pop. Other covers on their self-titled album, released in May by V2 Records, include Modern English's "I Melt with You," Dead Kennedys' "Too Drunk to Fuck," and The Clash's "Guns of Brixton." Enjoy!