Artist: Great Lake Swimmers
Video: 'Pulling on a Line (the Legion Sessions)'
Highlight: The Canadian folk band keeps things simple with a live performance in the Royal Canadian Legion Pub.



If you like what you see/hear, than read our exclusive interview with Great Lake Swimmers' Tony Dekker

Power-pop trio The Hundreds and Thousands might be new to you, but the Ottawa band formerly known as Starling have been around for more than a hot minute.

This fact becomes quite clear in their well-honed, high-energy concerts. So here's a live performance video for their fantastic single "Rat Race."

And If you dig it, then download this free MP3 of "Rat Race"

True, 12-year-old Shaheen Jafargholi has only clocked a couple million viral views compared to Susan Boyle's meme-smashing 100 mill, but then this Welsh boy only been blowing-up inboxes for a couple days with his holy-hell rendition of young Michael Jackson's "Who's Loving You?" (Um, did anyone else think this was originally an En Vogue song?)

Crazy thing is we're still on the first round of auditions for the suddenly inescapable reality show Britain's Got Talent which, of course, doesn't even air here. Not sure why not, though, since I can't recall a single pop-cult 'splosion like this off the stateside "America's Got Talent." Maybe b-grade judges Sharon Osbourne and David Hasslehoff scares off all the properly skilled candidates?

Anyway, here's this week's BGT phenom. Looking forward to seeing who Simon Cowell will wow us with next weekend.

Oh, and in other news American Idol is apparently still on the air.

Is this the longest, slowest iPod ad ever?

Nope, just Leslie Feist getting her arty on with Broken Social Scene's Kevin Drew as director and oddball actor Cillian Murphy, who once again gets to play against the living dead (though zombie-Feist is not at all speedy like those scary monsters from '28 Days Later.'

But be warned, this experimental 15-minute short film, shot during a Toronto winter and now streaming on Pitchfork.tv, is as silent as it is languid until the titular song kicks in towards the end.

Watch "The Water" after the jump...

Shove it. That was the message emblazoned on Nickelback singer Chad Kroeger's t-shirt and one can't help but assume it was directed at his band's critics.

After all, the hometown mook-rockers did kick off the show with their dumbest-ever anthem "Something In Your Mouth"-even the edgy host Russell Peters joked "Ay oh, my mom's watching!"-and upon picking up their best album award, a grinning Kroeger quipped "The press are going to have a field day with this one."

South-by-Southwest, the massive music industry bacchanal in Austin, is like a musical Rorschach blot. The annual festival is truly whatever you want it to be. A haven for hardcore bands or hip-hop stars. A land of electro all-nighters or afternoon acoustic jams. A showcase for up-and coming artists or over-the-hill legends. And a place where emo kids riot at noon; where drunken spring breakers and stoned music execs stagger down the woozily cacophonous streets; where Juliette Lewis poses on corners like a rock'n'roll harlot; where cooking mogul Rachel Ray parties with proto-punks the New York Dolls and indie heroes The Hold Steady; and where Woodstock-era hippie icon Wavy Gravy will totally steal your poolside sun-lounger. (That's bad karma, man!)

Sometimes you have your way with SXSW, most times it has its way with you. The third round of this year's festival battered me senseless as my 15-hour music marathon ranged from '80s icons to Iranian metal to Taylor Hanson (yes, *that* Hanson). Oh, and it ended with an illegal 3am hardcore show on a bridge followed by a hipster dance party in a former cabinet factory behind our hotel.

Storming in like they freaking own the place, Jane's Addiction took over day two of the South-by-Southwest music festival. Their firestorm reunion show at an exclusive Playboy afterparty held in an abandoned Safeway grocery store basically confirmed that Perry Farrell and his alt-revolutionaries ultimately started this whole musical Mecca.

Most music festivals are treated like a sketchy red light district, shunted off to a field, park or island on the outskirts of town. Not South-by-Southwest, though, where the city of Austin literally hands itself over to the music masses.(There are not many urban mayors who big-up Gibson guitars while boasting to the media that their city's success is largely due to an annual musical orgy.)

As the festival kicked of its opening day, cops closed down streets to cars while workers constructed impromptu stages in parking lots and laneways. Badge-holders and wristband-wearers alike started wandering around looking for their first fix. By the time I rolled into Red 7 to see one of my favourite bands, Portland punks The Thermals, the venue's backyard was already at capacity.

Another year, another SXSW. Or is it? The typically endless email flurry of party invites, press releases, secret show rumours (Metallica! Jane's Addiction! Kanye West!) and queries about whether you're "heading to Awesometown for Spring Break" have been filling inboxes and iPhones.

Yet it's not just another year for Austin's 23rd annual South-by-Southwest music festival, not with The Great Recession's dark cloud hanging heavy over the global music industry's biggest get-together, a five-day bacchanal of bands, beer and BBQ.

Having abandoned the idea of seeing British dance-rockers The Ting Tings--another buzz band made famous by an iPod ad--I instead returned to what has become my Canadian Music Week/Fest ground zero The Horseshoe where the Ottawa band formerly known as Starling has reinvented itself as The Hundreds and Thousands.

The power-pop chops are as honed as ever and though the criminally early 8:30pm set is only sparsely attended, the people that are here are almost entirely young women, which means the men will be sure to follow in short order. Their music is beefy and guitar heroic enough for an indie crowd and head-catchy enough to soundtrack Gossip Girl, which I expect the single "Rat Race" to do any day now.

City-wide music festivals like Canadian Music Fest are structured like an endless bar crawl, which can make one feel the urge to bolt to a new joint after every 40 minute showcase. But often a few bars wind up with line-ups so solid that one is forced to lay down roots and rock out in one place.

And so it went with Friday night at the Horseshoe Tavern, a ChartAttack.com-curated bill that was arguably the most anticipated of the weekend, thanks almost entirely to the midnight slot when the Handsome Furs would debut their new songs from just-released album of the year contender (yes, already) <i>Face Control</i>.

My first day of Canadian Music Week started out with Gene Simmons boasting about selling KISS-brand condoms and caskets ("we'll get you coming and going," he cracked like a Borscht belt comedian) and ending with a white midget throwing gang signs while Naughty By Nature led an arm-waving onstage crowd through "Hip-Hop Hooray."

Oh, and in between, I saw a shrieking fireball of a French-Canadian frontwoman who made the veterans seems like the very dinosaurs they are.

More after le jump.

Emerging from months of hibernation, the Canadian music scene is shaking off the winter blahs as about 600 bands roar into Toronto's bars and clubs, hoping to bank some buzz at the 27th annual Canadian Music Week conference and festival.

Now these industry events don't dole out label deals like they (allegedly) used to and similarly gone are the days when even most major label acts could hope to rake in the millions like CMW's keynote speaker Gene Simmons, who once boasted to AOL that he spent his first royalty cheque buying each of his parents their own house.

Hip-hop may've started out in New York, but it long ago spread to 'hoods worldwide. Really, the only thing unusual about Somali-Canadian K'naan's Mogadishu-rooted music is that there's not more immigrant rap out there.

Maybe it's a hard sell down-south-though Akon has had hits, his music has not made much use of the singer/producer's Senegalese roots and though he helped Toronto's own Kardinal Offishall turn "Dangerous" into a platinum single in the US, Kardi's Caribbean-influenced album bombed.

K'naan's just-released Troubadour is the next test-and already he seems to be passing with flying colours, performing on Jimmy Kimmel and getting shout-outs everywhere from Spin to CNN to the Village Voice. Of course, the label took no chances, packing on high-profile cameos like Maroon 5's Adam Levine, Metallica's Kirk Hammett, Damian Marley and Mos Def (though ironically, the best guest spot comes courtesy of long-forgotten MC Chubb Rock on fantastic first single "ABC's").

"I wonder if they're ready for a new sound," K'naan writes on his MySpace page, but if there was ever a time for African music to make inroads, it's in our newly open-minded Obama era. And based on last night's sold-out record release party in the multicultural metropolis of Toronto, the world just might be ready.