Jeez, is it May already? April flew by real quick.

Of these twenty songs that made up the audio journey of April 2009, about half were highly Coachella-influenced. The rest are present thanks to my constant exploration the musical landscape. Same old, same old.

1. Glasvegas – “It’s My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry” (Glasvegas)
2. Eels – “Things the Grandchildren Should Know” (Blinking Lights and Other Revelations)
3. Los Campesinos! – “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed” (We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed)
4. Silversun Pickups – “Lazy Eye” (Carnavas)
5. Okay – “Natural” (Huggable Dust)
6. Blitzen Trapper – “Furr” (Furr)
7. Grand Duchy – “Come On Over to My House” (Petits Fours)
8. TV on the Radio – “Stork & Owl (Gang Gang Dance remix)” (Read Silence EP)
9. Stone Temple Pilots – “Sour Girl” (No. 4)
10. My Brightest Diamond – “Feeling Good” (Dark Was the Night)
11. The Hold Steady – “Citrus” (Boys and Girls in America)
12. The Veils – “Sit Down by the Fire” (Sun Gangs)
13. Cage the Elephant – “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” (Cage the Elephant)
14. Fucked Up – “Crooked Head” (The Chemistry of Common Life)
15. Antony and the Johnsons – “Kiss My Name” (The Crying Light)
16. Radiohead – “I Am Citizen Insane” (Go to Sleep)
17. The Hold Steady – “Stuck Between Stations” (Boys and Girls in America)
18. Camera Obscura – “French Navy” (My Maudlin Career)
19. Silversun Pickups – “Growing Old is Getting Old” (Swoon)
20. Radiohead – “Let Down” (OK Computer)

And for those interested, I made an imeem playlist so you can check the whole thing out. Enjoy.

Or just listen to it here.

Ryan Adams wins this month. Between my realization that Heartbreaker is an amazing album and the release of his new one, Easy Tiger, he pretty much dominated my listening for the month. I’m actually listening to Love Is Hell while I write this, completely by coincidence. It’s no surprise, then, that he’s broken into the top ten of my all-time most played artists.

Oh, and a new “feature” for you: Often times the tracks I put in my monthly playlist are available for stream and/or download by the artist in some capacity, in which case I’ll provide a link.

1. Clipse – “Mr. Me Too” (Hell Hath No Fury)
2. Ryan Adams – “Halloweenhead” (Easy Tiger)
3. T.I. – “What You Know” (King)
4. Amy Winehouse – “Rehab” (Back To Black)
5. Mew – “Chinaberry Tree” (And The Glass Handed Kites)
6. Ryan Adams – “Two” (Easy Tiger)
7. Interpol – “Pioneer To The Falls” (Our Love To Admire)
8. Ryan Adams – “To Be Young (is to be sad, is to be high)” (Heartbreaker)
9. The American Dollar – “DEA” (The Technicolour Sleep)
10. Justice – “Genesis” (†)
11. Los Campesinos! – “You! Me! Dancing!” (Sticking Fingers Into Sockets)
12. Maps – “To The Sky” (We Can Create)
13. Mono – “halcyon (beautiful days)” (Walking cloud and deep red sky, Flag fluttered and the sun shined)
14. Iron & Wine – “Boy With A Coin” (The Shepherd’s Dog)

I love it when I beat Pitchfork to the punch. I’ve been listening to Los Campesinos! for quite a while now after coming across their phenomenal song You! Me! Dancing! during my exploration of 2006′s countless end-of-year lists (I don’t even know who Phil Gyford is).

Several weeks later Pitchfork made small mention of them. And today they published their review of LC!’s first stateside release, Sticking Fingers Into Sockets, giving it a whopping 8.4. That’s huge for Pitchfork, in case you weren’t aware. And, for once, their excessive verbage does an album justice:

Silly names aside, Los Campesinos! play superbly crafted indie pop that bounces off walls like Love Is All, grins with the childlike exuberance of Bis, and throws the toy chest into its arrangements like Architecture in Helsinki. Glockenspiels and pizzicato violin veer into reckless guitar riffs and full-bodied handclaps– or fizz over, like Mentos and Coke, into happy-stupid crescendos. Gareth shares lead vocal duties with the similarly pseudonymous Aleksandra Campesino!, and their boy-girl exchanges give the music an extra, sweet frisson. Newfeld’s treatment turns “You! Me! Dancing!” from a lo-fi rallying cry into an unstoppable force for converting spindly legs into dancefloor blurs.

Twee on, kids. Twee on.