Margot and Co. go major

According to their Myspace page, Chicago's Margot and the Nuclear So and Sos have signed to major label Epic Records. While many in the indie community lamented that their exceptional debut LP The Dust of Retreat (undoubtedly one of the best records of 2006) did not garner the attention and praise it deserved, we have happily been proven wrong. Apparently it curried enough favour to win them a berth at a label that is already home to Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand, Ben Folds, and Oasis, among others. Congratulations to the most talented octet in indie music today.

They will be in California in May:
5.23 - San Francisco, CA: The Independent (21+)
5.24 - Los Angeles, CA: The Echo (18+)

The Best Of the best

At first blush, it would seem impossible to whittle down Radiohead's impossibly sublime catalogue down to a less-than-thirty-track collection of songs. But the folk at Capitol/EMI didn't get where they are by way of any shortage of ambition. So here, according to those very people, are the best songs that Radiohead has ever produced (this collection will be released stateside on June 3):

Disc One:
1. Just
2. Paranoid Android
3. Karma Police
4. Creep
5. No Surprises
6. High and Dry
7. My Iron Lung
8. There There (The Boney King of Nowhere.)
9. Lucky
10. Optimistic
10. Fake Plastic Trees
11. Idioteque
12. 2+2=5 (The Lukewarm.)
13. The Bends
14. Pyramid Song
15. Street Spirit (Fade Out)
16. Everything in Its Right Place

Disc Two
1. Airbag
2. I Might Be Wrong
3. Go to Sleep
4. Let Down
5. Planet Telex
06. Exit Music (For a Film)
07. The National Anthem
08. Knives Out
09. Talk Show Host
10. You
11. Anyone Can Play Guitar
12. How to Disappear Completely
13 True Love Waits (Live)

It's hard to not be disappointed by a list like this. Undoubtedly, you'll be appalled that this song ("Subterranean Homesick Alien"!!?!) or that song ("A Wolf at the Door?!??!") is missing, and so are we. But it's not so disgraceful as anyone might have expected. At least they gave it two discs. Right?

Natalie Portman makes a mistake

In the most tragic Pitchfork report since that one that said Blur might not be getting back together, Natalie Portman stars in the video for "Carmensita", a song off Devendra Banhart's newest and as-shitty-as-all-the-rest LP Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. Not much else to say; stomachs are turning here at Never Learned to Swim. Natalie, if you're reading: you're better than this.