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Just when you thought Hollywood had run out of ideas, you are right. Apparently a Milli Vanilli biopic is in the works. more -

Kimberley Rew Celebrates 25th Anniversary of Walking On Sunshine With Four Retro Releases

Kimberley Rew, best known as an accomplished guitarist and songwriter who wrote one of the best known pop classics of the 80's -"Walking On Sunshine," has also written hit songs for The Bangles and Celine Dion and with his band Katrina & The Waves even won the Eurovision song contest in 1997 with "Love Shine A Light."

Inspired by this renewed interest in his work, Rew has put together a retrospective of four albums that draw from his highly creative output in the decade prior to his first hit single. These albums, released in late Spring 2010, are; Kimberley Rew – The Bible Of Bop (Special Edition) '81; The Waves – Shock Horror (Special Edition) '82; Katrina & The Waves – Katrina & The Waves (Special Edition) '83 and Katrina & The Waves – Katrina & The Waves 2 (Special Edition) '84. These special releases are all leading up to the Summer celebration of the 25th Anniversary of his first hit single "Walking On Sunshine," which is officially one of the most played summer songs of all time.

Rew's career started after leaving university in 1974 to form the first incarnation of THE WAVES with drummer Alex Cooper. Their psychedelic folk rock sound was big news on the band scene in Cambridge, England but the band never released any records. However a 1976 recording session is included as a bonus on the special edition of Shock Horror. - more on this story

Fantasia To Debut Song on Oprah

J Records' recording artist Fantasia will make an emotional television debut performance of "Even Angels," a new song from her forthcoming album, on The Oprah Winfrey Show on February 3. Written by Heather Bright and produced by The Stereotypes, the inspirational song is currently available for purchase on FantasiaOfficial.com and iTunes.

First introduced on her VH1 docu-series Fantasia For Real, the lyrics of "Even Angels" exemplifies the necessary strides Fantasia continues to make as she gets her life and career back on track. The 8-time Grammy nominee is currently in the studio recording songs for untitled third album, tentatively set for release this spring on J Records.

The Platinum-selling recording artist and actress also sits down with Oprah to discuss the highly-publicized and a few previously unknown details of her life as captured on her hit VH1 reality series Fantasia For Real. A ratings bonanza for VH1, the series premiere brought in 2.3 million total viewers and ranked as the #2 non-sports original cable series for the day. New episodes of Fantasia For Real will resume on Monday, February 15 at 10pm on VH1. -

Devendra Banhart Announces Tour Dates

Devendra Banhart and band will be playing U.S. tour dates this March in celebration of the release of What Will We Be , his sixth full length release.

Devendra Banhart exploded on the international music scene in 2002 quickly winning a coterie of devoted fans as well as an unusually hefty amount of critical kudos right from the outset.

The new album was recorded in a sleepy Northern California town throughout the Spring of 2009 co-produced by Devendra and Paul Butler (from UK outfit Band Of Bees). What Will We Be is his label debut for Warner Bros. Records. - more on this story

Kari Ann Peniche Releases Debut Single

Inspired by her experiences in the celebrity spotlight and "borrowing" the title straight from the tabloids, Kari Ann Peniche's debut single, "U and Me and Tiger Makes 3" was released February 2 on Los Angeles based HOR Entertainment Group/HOR Records.

Co-written with HOR label executives, veteran producers and songwriters, Curt Cuomo and Larry Lee, the track is a contagious pop song that will surely create a sensation buzz both on the internet, at radio and in the clubs. The 3 minute Top-40 radio ready tune is the culmination of a constant theme in Kari Ann's life, which is all about EMPOWERMENT!

HOR Entertainment's Curt Cuomo noted, "Kari Ann and I have been wanting to collaborate for some time on a music project, so It was great fun to work with her on this single. We all feel like we have a real hit on our hands. In fact, we're sure we have a 'Tiger by the Tail' with this one." With the release of "U and Me and Tiger Makes 3," (available on ITunes February 2, 2010 on HOR Records), Kari Ann demonstrates that she is not just another pretty face but in fact a woman with many talents. - more on this story

Truthlive Releases Autobiographical Shoot Me Down

"Shoot Me Down," the first single from TRUTHLiVE's EP The Unlearning, paints a biography of the emcee's life experience. TRUTHLiVE explains, "In all honesty, what sparked the idea for the song was the gunshot and respirator breathing sound effects already in the beat."

The song's intense drumbeat and bass set the tone, while a piano line and soul clap give the track an extra pop. As the piano mimics the spoken pulse, TRUTHLiVE drives the song's theme home, rapping, "They wanna shoot me down, wanna kill all my dreams/ But I keep on breathing, keep on believing."

As a self-proclaimed optimistic realist, TRUTHLiVE built on the sounds of Tha Bizness' powerful beat and produced an empowering theme song for the downtrodden. - more on this story

Maino Releases Digital EP

Hustle Hard Entertainment/Atlantic recording artist Maino has announced the release of his new EP. "UNSTOPPABLE" arrives at iTunes and all other DSPs on Tuesday, February 2nd.

The four-track EP is highlighted by the Urban radio smash, "Get 'Em Tiger," Maino's anthemic tribute which is not directed towards Tiger Woods but used as a metaphor to describe himself.

"Unstoppable" also features three all-new tracks, "The Realest," "Gotta Love Me," and "I'm The Future." - more on this story

Mia Doi Todd Releases New Video Directed By Michel Gondry

Singer-songwriter-guitarist-poet-painter-dancer Mia Doi Todd is releasing a video of a brand new song "Open Your Heart," directed by famed video director Michel Gondry. The song stems from a yet-to-be-recorded album of new material which will be her ninth.

Mia is a true artist -- an expressionist in many forms. Her garden of song is vast with flowers of infinite shape, color, size, and individuality. Last year saw the release of Morning Music album album of acoustic ambient music recorded in her recording workshop by the Los Angeles River. This was preceded by a more conventional vocal album, GEA.

Mia Doi Todd was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, the only child of a Japanese-American judge and an Irish-American sculptor. Trained as a classical vocalist in her adolescence and teenage years, Mia began writing songs while a student at Yale University, inspired by the mid-90's Indie Rock movement. Her first three records all featured minimal, acoustic instrumentation, emphasizing her soaring vocals and finely wrought lyrics, the latter redolent of romantic poetry, but employing puns, alliteration, homonyms and many other verbal experiments. Starting with her fourth album, released on the Columbia Jazz imprint pursued more orchestrated arrangements. - youtube link

The Infamous Stringdusters Return With New Album and Tour

About the most important question a young bluegrass band faces right out of the gate is whether they can play. The Infamous Stringdusters wasted no time in providing their answer—an emphatic "yes"—winning IBMA Album, Song and Emerging Artist of the Year the very same year they released their debut, Fork In the Road. On Things That Fly, their third album, due out April 20, 2010 on Sugar Hill, they venture into virtually uncharted territory for an acoustic group: a sonically and thematically expansive album that lends itself to absorbed listening from start to finish, much like the great rock albums do.

Holed up in the Charlottesville, Virginia studio Haunted Hollow, with significant preproduction under their belts and Gary Paczosa (Nickel Creek, Dixie Chicks, Tim O'Brien) on board as engineer and co-producer, the 'Dusters did things they'd never done before: guitarist Andy Falco put his hidden keyboard talents to use on smoldering organ parts; voices and instruments alike were splashed with reverb; and, though the band has no shortage of quality lead singers in fiddler Jeremy Garrett, dobro player Andy Hall and upright bassist Travis Book, a few fine-singing friends—country standout Dierks Bentley, Americana songwriter-chanteuse Sarah Siskind and Crooked Still frontwoman Aoife O'Donovan added novel tones. All this—and more, much more—makes for a lush, new 'Dusters experience.

Says Book, "I think string bands have a tendency to feel like when they go to record, doing anything that they can't necessarily replicate 100 percent live is off-limits. Instead of saying 'This is how it sounds when the six of us play it standing around in a circle, so we're just going to put mics up and capture it and that's going to be it,' we really got deeper in the production aspect."
Factor in that every member of the band—rounded out by de facto tour videographer Chris Pandolfi (banjo) and Jesse Cobb (mandolin)—is a stylish, consummate picker with a hardly strictly bluegrass background, as well as a skilled songwriter, and you see that this band is genuinely built for breadth. "We wanted to make sure everyone had writing input on the record," Hall relates. "We'd never done that before, and it's a lot of why we started the band." - more on this story

The Abramson Singers Digital Release and Tour Dates

When singer-songwriter-guitarist Leah Abramson developed tendonitis in her wrist three years ago, she didn't despair. Unable to write songs on guitar, Abramson - who, as a member of Dyad, earned a 2006 CFMA nomination for Emerging Artist of the Year - borrowed an 8-track and started recording a cappella vocal pieces under the name The Abramson Singers.

Now healed and playing her guitar again, Leah is preparing to release the resulting self-titled digital-only album on Toronto's White Whale Records. She will be kicking it off with daily shows on the Via Rail train out to Toronto and then playing a handful of shows out east.

The Abramson Singers is a mesmerizing indie-folk noir album that showcases Leah's glorious vocals in arrangements of up to eight-part harmony. Praised in the past for her "soft focus" sound and her "rough charm that dissipates into subtle beauty," Leah recreates that vibe on the new album with music that is at once melancholy and uplifting. - more on this story