Goth and synth-pop weren’t always so different as they might seem these days. Both genres started out in the early 1980s as fairly glum offshoots of English post-punk but eventually progressed into their own more cartoonish personas – Goth became the musical equivalent of Tim Burton movies, all cinematic darkness angd black nail polish and teenage girls pining for Edward Cullen, while synth-pop became the soundtrack for day-futurism and shiny happy mall culture. But in the beginning, there was not a world of difference between The Cure and OMD.

Brooklyn’s Selebrities are making a good effort at reuniting the genres. On “Can’t Make Up My Mind,” they mix Dare-era The Human League synth-pop with a Joy Division/Cure-style guitar hook, all topped off with Maria Usbeck’s Siouxsie-lite vocals. The result is a fairly delightful track that has just enough of a dark edge to it to keep it from being cloying. While Selebrities dress the song up in goth surfaces and atmosphere, at heart “Can’t Make Up My Mind” is pure new wave pop, with more in common with Erasure and Freezepop than the Banshees or Danielle Dax.

On their Facebook page, Selebrities describe their sound as “voguish summertime goth,” and that’s a pretty accurate description of “Can’t Make Up My Mind.” It’s the sound of goth that gets out of the basement once in a while and goes out and plays with its musical siblings. It’s as if Anthony Michael Hall’s bullying character from Edward Scissorhands remembered that he was being played by Farmer Ted from Sixteen Candles and decided to lighten up a bit.

“Can’t Make Up My Mind” is the fourth of ten tracks on Selebrities’ debut LP, Delusions, released this past May by Cascine.

Click here to listen to Delusions on Spotify.

If you liked this song, you should also check out:

Pictureplane “Goth Star”

Shit Robot “Take ‘Em Up (featuring Nancy Whang)”

CREEP “Days (Azari & III remix)”

You can practically hear the smoke machines chugging away in the background as “Throw Away This,” the latest single from Brooklyn-based electro-duo Telepathe unfurls. Yet the neo-retro vibe that Melissa Livaudis and Busy Gangnes cultivate on “Throw Away This” isn’t easy to pigeonhole.

The track’s first words instruct the listener, saying, “You can’t think about it too much.” That’s good advice because “Throw Away This” is a song that’s meant to be swallowed whole and experienced by the limbic system. So give your busy neocortex a rest, crank up “Throw Away This,” and let your body feel the beat.

Telepathe excel at creating the contradictions that set “Throw Away This” apart from the bazillion other dance tracks careening around cyberspace. The vocals are a breathy mix of articulated Jabberwocky – think Robyn meets Eleanor Friedberger. Although the synth-driven melody is garbled and moody, it is undercut by relentless beats that offer a counter point to the gothic melody’s leanings.

White Iris recently released “Throw Away This” as a 7” backed with a track called “Destroyer.”

If you liked this song, you should also check out:

Lovers “Figure 8″

Chucha Santamaria y Usted “Fiebre Tropical”

Selebrities “Can’t Make Up My Mind”

Longtime One Track Mind readers will already be familiar with Chicago/Detroit hip-hop duo The Cool Kids from their guest vocals on 2009′s “Awesome” by The Bloody Beetroots. Lately, the rappers have teamed up with the Green Label Sound project (which has previously worked with Chromeo, Holy Ghost!, Solid Gold, and Theophilus London) to release a pair of free digital singles: “Delivery Man” and today’s song, “Bundle Up.”

“Bundle Up” is the descendant of the early Def Jam aesthetic that made early hits by Run D.M.C. and LL Cool J so distinctive; a minimalistic, raw loop hammers away in the background providing the song with a crunchy beat. The Cool Kids add to this base sparingly, relying predominantly upon an 8-bit synthesizer riff and their own call and response vocals. It shares the same general feeling that made Clipse’s “Grindin’” so compelling nearly a decade ago (and really, if someone said that The Neptunes were behind the production on “Bundle Up,” no one would have reason to doubt it).

When examined through this lens, “Bundle Up” is also illustrative of hip-hop’s increasing comfort mingling the genre’s traditional template of sounds with the increasingly pervasive influences of contemporary electronic music. Of course, that is more about things coming full circle than it is a matter of horizons expanding–after all, the Zulu Nation was down with Kraftwerk before Kanye was cool with Daft Punk, and early hip-hop artists frequently found themselves at home on dance music labels–but one need look no further than the charts to see how rappers like Kid Cudi and Lil Wayne have warmly embraced recent trends from the electronic world.

In that sense, “Bundle Up” really does feel like an updated take on “Grindin’;” a little more synthed-out but with the same great vocals and dirty beat.

If you liked this song, you should also check out:

The Bloody Beetroots “Awesome (feat. The Cool Kids)”

Nitty Scott, MC “WORK (Grustlin’)”

Theophilus London “Humdrum Town”

Beyond EMF and Jesus Jones, the Grebo and Madchester scenes didn’t make much of a dent in the U.S. during the height of their U.K. popularity. But those scenes ruled in England circa 1988-91, when bands like Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, The Wonder Stuff and Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine stormed the British charts with an Ecstasy-fueled combination of psychedelia and dance music that bridged the gap between the synth-fueled days of ‘80s New Wave and the guitar-centric Britpop of the ‘90s.

Portland’s Starry Saints hearken back to those trippy days of twenty years past with their song “Angels.” Mixing an electronic dance groove with psychedelic guitars and organ riffs and blissed-out vocals, Starry Saints make it easy to picture oneself on the dance floor at Manchester’s Hacienda Club raving until dawn. It would sound perfect on a playlist sandwiched between The Stone Roses’ “I Wanna Be Adored” and Inspiral Carpets’ “This is How it Feels.”

Starry Saints are made up of former members of the nu-gaze band High Violets and the indie-dance band Every Move a Picture, so in addition to being a tribute to the U.K. sound at the dawn of the ‘90s, “Angels” is also a natural synthesis of its creators’ former bands. It combines dream-pop ambience with dance music physicality. It would’ve sounded perfect coming out of the English Midlands in 1990 and it still sounds pretty good coming out of the U.S. northwest now.

“Angels” is the lead track from Serenade, released last November by Comet Rock Records.

If you liked this song, you should also check out:

April 2011 MP3 Rewind

The Golden Filter “Hide Me”

RACES “Big Broom”