At once dark, complex, impossibly honest, and yet, somehow simple, "Fabulous Muscles" is almost accessible in its minimalist-pop appeal. This record was written on the heels of huge upheavals and violent personal changes, so there's less of a dance influence and much more of a pop and academic/experimental feel. Sounds are used to rhythmically push some songs forward in a top-40 way, but with fewer straight beats. Noise restrictions also led to more use of single, quiet acoustic instruments. This record is    [ read more ]

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#48 Seller of 2005! To hear Xiu Xiu is to be shaken, disturbed, and shown something original. Jamie Stewart sings haunted and tortured, though always with a sense of humor somewhere below the poisoned blood. La Foret is his most harrowing and beautiful to date, waltzing between acoustic parts so intimate you can hear his shoe scooting on the studio floor as he inches closer to the mic, and pounding dark-wave thunderstorms where electronics go Mogwai loud and Jamie screams over the hissing, spitting d   [ read more ]

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Whereas current indie-rock darlings Interpol have taken all the favorite parts from your favorite new wave bands and fashioned them into refreshing new pop songs, San Francisco's Xiu Xiu have salvaged all of the ignored dark fragments of your favorite new wave songs and turned them into some refreshingly disconcerting new anti-pop songs. If last year's excellent "Knife Play" album was the soundtrack to a nervous breakdown, "A Promise" is the soundtrack to the final desperate act of a hemorrhaging psyche.

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Nine lo-fi tracks by Xiu Xiu mastermind, Jamie Stewart. Six alternate versions of songs from the band's previous releases ("Knife Play," "Chapel of the Chimes" EP, and "A Promise"), along with two new songs and a cover of the Smiths' "Asleep." Limited to 1,000 copies with beautiful handmade packaging.

CD $16.99

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Insound LP+MP3! Purchase the vinyl format of Knife Play and you'll receive a link to download the MP3s for free immediately after check-out! VINYL FORMAT. The debut album from these on-the-down, ultra-sad pop gloomers comprised of LAUREN ANDREWS, YVONNE CHEN (Zum Audio/Media), CORY McCULLOCH (IBOPA, TEN IN THE SWEAR JAR), and JAIMIE STEWART. Ten simple and forlorn tracks played with bells, synths, piano, gongs, harmonium, guitar, electronics, bass, and vocals. Includes guest performan   [ read more ]

LP $12.99

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Fabulous Muscles was the group's third album, after A promise and Knife Play, and was licensed for Acuarela in Spain, France and Portugal after falling in love with Xiu Xiu's talent to vigorously challenge rock music clichés through their wide range of unexpected breaks, juxtaposed sounds and a handful of factual lyrics about the lack of love and desire and about what happens when we feel too much love and too much desire. Now, in their new Fleshettes, they once again expose old    [ read more ]

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This five-song EP is the second self-contained effort from these remarkable folks from San Jose, following the release of their album "Knife Play" (which Pitchfork named as one of the top albums for the first half of 2002). This EP contains five new songs including the sparse and intense "I Am Center of Your World," the viciously potent "Jennifer Lopez," and a raw cover of the Joy Division/New Order classic "Ceremony."

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A feverish and disturbing set of songs, but it's also some of the group's most accessible. His songs play out like bedroom symphonies, bedroom confessions over chimes and gonging bells and industrial beats and buttery guitar leads that slide through the songs like a straight razor opening up skin. Elaborate, ornate, and bubbling over with noise, but with a sense of less-is-more; minimalism over excess. A 35-minute dreamscape of scraping urgency that haunts and disturbs.[ read more ]

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Insound LP+MP3! Purchase the vinyl format of The Air Force and you'll receive a link to download the MP3s for free immediately after check-out! VINYL FORMAT. A feverish and disturbing set of songs, but it's also some of the group's most accessible. His songs play out like bedroom symphonies, bedroom confessions over chimes and gonging bells and industrial beats and buttery guitar leads that slide through the songs like a straight razor opening up skin. Elaborate, ornate, and bubbling   [ read more ]

LP $13.99

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Insound LP+MP3! Purchase the vinyl format of Women as Lovers and you'll receive a link to download the MP3s for free immediately after check-out! VINYL FORMAT. Xiu Xiu has long been known as prolific, bordering on crazed, but with this new album, each song is so different from the next and so fully realized, the group's creative ferocity is simply astonishing and rapidly taking on new dimensions. No other Xiu Xiu album has ever been more approachable or communicative on a basic human    [ read more ]

2xLP $13.99

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Xiu Xiu has long been known as prolific, bordering on crazed, but with this new album, each song is so different from the next and so fully realized, the group's creative ferocity is simply astonishing and rapidly taking on new dimensions. No other Xiu Xiu album has ever been more approachable or communicative on a basic human level. "Sounding as brilliant and maddening as ever, tortured and combative, and with a kind of confrontational intimacy that is inimitable" - Salon.

CD $14.99

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ITALIAN IMPORT. Hailing from Oakland and Seattle, Xiu Xiu are a sonic experiment in sad, harrowing, politically dark, often confrontational pop songs. Life and Live is an exclusive release only on the Italian label Xeng -- the band historically has been strongly associated with 5 Rue Christine in the U.S. This is their fifth release, and was recorded before La Forêt and after the incredible Fabulous Muscles album. In Life and Live you will find a brilliant collection of acoustic    [ read more ]

CD $15.99

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