With Memorial Day the official start of summer, it’s time for another playlist of new music to indulge in over the long weekend (along with the long awaited, new episodes of Arrested Development). Highly anticipated albums by Vampire Weekend and the National, were released this month, along with new music by Deerhunter and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. Newcomers such as CHVRCHES and Hands fill out the list with new music from Yo La Tengo, Foals and Telekinisis and more. Time to fire up the grill and crank the tunes.

Andy Kayes, an up and coming France-based British rapper, released his indie-album, 2012’s Alone in Numbers to little notice. So it’s surprising when you take one look at the neon-saturated glow of his promo video, “The Man Without a Face”, a stylish exercise in decadent glamour and cutting street-smarts. While Kayes certainly doesn’t have the kind of major-label cash to throw around, the video’s intelligent sense of style (an ingenious use of colour, clever effects and skillful editing) easily trumps the marketing efforts of his far more financially-endowed hip-hop contemporaries. The number’s lean, stripped-to-the-bone beats on which rivers of verbal flow ride atop give ample room for Kayes and his cohort, Copywrite, to demonstrate their rhyme-technique. Sized up against Kayes anxious, nimble and textured verse, Copywrite’s no-nonsense rhymes slice like a serrated blade.

Director Rama Burshtein’s Fill the Void is nothing short of a masterwork: gorgeously filmed, expertly paced, and, much like 2011’s Iranian classic A Separation, challenges its non-native audience to recognize familiar tensions, themes, and circumstances in an unfamiliar setting. Void, Israel’s official entry for 2012 Best Foreign Language Film short list consideration, also boasts compelling performances, namely that of its leading lady, Hadas Yaron, who snagged the Best Actress prize at the 2012 Venice Film Festival.

In the past several years, Dylan Ettinger has carved his place out in the electronic music world with a dark, post-punk indebted style that embraces a range of analog equipment, hacking a new path out of well-worn devices. His newest, bass-heavy, ringing “The Pale Horse”, found on a new split 7” with Goldendust, sees Ettinger yowling in borderline-Ian Curtis desperation over cut-up, static-y percussion. The song’s video consists of VHS footage from Michael Almereyda ‘s Lynchian 1994 vampire masterpiece Nadja, including a scene of David Lynch himself in a turn as a morgue receptionist, cut up into a stuttering, nauseous, color-altered smear (courtesy of the Tachyons+ Video Art Machine) that complements Ettinger’s icy electronic excursions. The same weighty, pixelated pulse drives both song and video, resulting in an claustrophobic, immersive viewing and listening experience.

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