Chicago duo The Hood Internet are known throughout the blogosphere for their maddening mashups of hip-hop and classic pop tunes. However, they are hoping to change that perception later this year with the release of their first album of entirely original compositions. With that record in the works, the pair have released a single that finds them halfway between their old reappropriation and their future creation: a cover of the xx’s “VCR” with completely fresh production.

For the task, The Hood Internet are flanked by a trio of young talent. Elizabeth Harper (vocalist for former OTM spotlighted band Class Actress) handles the choruses on “VCR,” with rising rapper Freddie Gibbs tossing in some new verses and Ninjasonik‘s Telli lending his talents as well. Together, these four forces combine to breathe a lot of life into the xx’s composition–originally a sleepy, mid-tempo tune.

In The Hood Internet’s hands, “VCR” retains some of its moodiness but the dirge-like qualities of the original are supplanted with bursts of enthusiasm, particularly during Gibbs’ sections. The reworked version is carried along by a simple drum machine beat, wobbly synthesized bass, and a cowbell so assertive and in your face you’d think it was lifted from a Beasties cut.

By The Hood Internet’s standards, “VCR” isn’t necessarily a party track but it does have the sort of vitality you would expect from one of their productions. Whether or not this augurs a wider breadth of emotional range on their forthcoming LP remains to be seen, but it certainly bodes well for their reintroduction to listeners.

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

Chiddy Bang “Sooner or Later”

CREEP “Days (Azari & III remix)”

Crystal Castles “Not in Love (featuring Robert Smith)”

While Dave Sitek is best known as TV On the Radio’s guitarist, he has also built a reputation as a producer par excellence by working with Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Liars, and Holly Miranda. For his newest project, Maximum Balloon, Sitek recruited some of his favorite vocalists, including Theophilus London, Karen O., and David Byrne to add guest vocals to his songs.

The album version of “Groove Me” is a synth-drenched, guilty pleasure, and Jneiro Jarel’s remix doesn’t stray too far from the original’s structure. The Philadelphia-based producer plays up the backbeat, adds cowbell, and scuffs up the slick ‘80s veneer a little, but he wisely leaves London’s magnetic vocals at the front of the mix. London, a Brooklyn-based artist who has collaborated with Mark Ronson as Chauffer, and rapped over dance beats while referencing the Smiths on “Humdrum Town,” is a singular talent whose come hither vocals carry both versions of the song.

Check out Maximum Balloon in its entirety when it’s released by Interscope on September 20, 2010.

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

Lykke Li “I Follow Rivers (Dave Sitek remix)”

Theophilus London “Humdrum Town”

Crystal Castles “Not in Love (featuring Robert Smith)”

Along with The Rapture, LCD Soundsystem, and Radio 4, !!! were one of New York City’s best gifts to dance floors during the 2000′s. After the revivalism of Joy Division’s moodier branch of the post-punk family tree at the turn of the century, the stage was set for its funkier, sexier cousin–the bough which forked out from the likes of Talking Heads and P.I.L. Some folks proclaimed !!!’s 2001 self-titled debut and its follow-up, 2004′s Louden Up Now, “dance-punk.” Others thought “post-punk” sufficed. Most didn’t really know quite how to slap an appellation on the band’s groove-heavy freak-outs but in the end, it didn’t matter: to hear !!! was to immediately understand what they were all about (and probably to love it, too).

Nic Offer and his crew were always more interested in edginess than their contemporaries, a trait that may have unfairly kept them in the shadows more than their peers, but they were likewise also more preoccupied with the primal energy of dance music in its myriad shades. “AM/FM,” the lead track from their fourth LP, Strange Weather, Isn’t It? (to be released August 24th courtesy of Warp), lays this idea out for everyone to hear. Within one song we hear a delayed synth riff and percussion layers plucked from the height of The Happy Mondays’ reign over the Madchester scene, an elastic bass line borrowed–in spirit–from the death disco of predecessors such as Delta 5 and Gang of Four, and cooed female vocal harmonies which evoke Giorgio Moroder and the Italo kids.

Where the bouillabaisse of inspiration is concerned, these influences make for a hearty stock. While “AM/FM” never gets as crazy as previous tracks such as “Hello? Is This Thing On?” or “Intensify,” it does deliver the same party-ready sensibilities and, just maybe, a slightly more mature approach to the songwriting craft than their first three albums.

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

Something Fierce “Empty Screens”

HEALTH “Die Slow”

Pablo “Hey Luci”

Although Poison Control Center claim the college town of Ames, Iowa as their home base, their latest album was borne of the time they spent apart as much as it was of coming together. Over the past couple years, the band’s four members all lived in different cities and worked on their sophomore effort by exchanging demos across the distance. By last May, the quartet had enough material kicking around to hunker down face to face and record Sad Sour Future, a 71 minute long treatise on those classic rock themes: love, loneliness, and death. Their music isn’t as gloomy as all that, though; the band is adept at phrasing their lyrical concerns within a framework of catchy, poppy indie-rock melodies which can prove hard to shake.

The third track on Sad Sour Future (which was released by Afternoon Records on May 18th) is the infectious “Being Gone,” a three and a half minute jaunt with an unassuming but addictive personality. In its more wild flashes of guitar there are shades of Pavement, with splashes of The Lucksmiths and The Wave Pictures in its sparse yet effective instrumentation, and more than a light dusting of the footloose, summery vibe of Free Energy to pull it all together. The song’s first lyric (“It’s not so easy breaking up today even though you’ve got it all planned out”) is a darkly comic riff on the old theme of “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” setting the tone for the rest of the jam. As “Being Gone” comes to a climax, falsetto vocals duke it out with organ and piano and saxophone in a shoulder-shaking fit you’ll want to relive repeatedly.

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

It’s A King Thing “Old Hobbies”

Electric President “Safe and Sound”