Though Feist’s worldwide tour of Metals won’t wrap up until next March, Leslie, tourmates Mountain Man and the gang took some time out to document the first leg with a Polaroid camera and film supplied to us by the Impossible Project. Special thanks to Graeme Flegenheimer for facilitating the project. Check out Leslie’s shots and captions above.

Though Feist played the CBC’s 75th anniversary show about a month ago, only recently has the audio surfaced. So, on that note, here’s Feist’s duet rendition of Metals cut “Cicadas & Gulls” alongside Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste. Stream the performance below.

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It was a beautiful evening at the Hollywood Bowl for the KCRW-sponsored tribute to Serge Gainsbourg curated by Beck. The all star line up included Ed Droste (Grizzly Bear), Victoria Legrand (Beach House), Mike Patton (Faith No More), Sean Lennon & Charlotte Kemp Muhl (The Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger), Zola Jesus, Lulu Gainsbourg, and up-and-coming rocker Joseph Gordon-Levitt all backed by Beck’s Sea Change era band. After playing a number of classic Gainsbourg tunes, Jean Claude Vannier conducted a recreation of Gainsbourg’s album Historie De Melody Nelson. C’était magnifique. Check out performances by Beck, JGL, Zola, and the Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger below.

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The March edition of our Monthly Mix series runs the gamut from South London mixtape hip-hop, to lady-baiting R&B, pop, to lady-fronted arpeggiated-vocal ukulele/sax funk. Or at least it runs that gamut within its first three tracks. There are plenty of collaborations (the lead harmonizers from Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear, harmonizing; PS I Love You and Diamond Rings, also) and some interesting and honorifically named reappropriations (Rihanna’s “Hard” on Giggs’ “Hard Style,” Waka Flocka Flame’s raps on Elite Gymnastics’ ’90s club workout “WΛKΛ”); some blistering new wave (Cold Cave) and blistering punk/metal/whatever (Liturgy). There are new tracks from old heralded heroes (J Mascis) and an old track from an old Harald hero (i.e. Grosskopf). As always the purpose of these mixes is to roundup the best free and legal MP3s to surface on the web since our last installment; as always, I couldn’t help but sequence it to tease the dialogue from track to track. There are 16 of them all told, which you can download in one zip file and see listed individually below:

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When Robin Pecknold has released solo material in the past it’s been under his White Antelope moniker. Today’s sneak-released three-song EP is credited simply to Robin Pecknold, tweeted from his @FleetFoxes account, with one track featuring stylistic forefather (forelderbrother?) Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear. Robin says that these “mellow jams” are distinctly not Fleet Foxes songs, just three tunes he set to tape with his friend Noah in Los Angeles needing an avenue of dissemination. (Twitter to the rescue.) You can download his track with Droste, titled “I’m Losing Myself,” here, and be not surprised at how lovely their voices sound in harmony:

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In a few days the city’s indie kids will make their way out to Coney Island for the Voice‘s annual Siren festival, chances are many of the same kids who made the trek last night to see Tweedy and Yo La and surprise guests Feist and Ed Droste at KeySpan Park last night. Wilco welcomed openers Yo La (whose set pulled from their fantastic new Popular Songs LP, along with some “Autumn Sweater” and the like) onstage for “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” a few songs after Cyclone buddies Leslie and Droste joined the band on “You & I.” It was the second time Feist performed the (The Album) collab live, the third coming tonight with Wilco’s scheduled Letterman performance. Photographer Natasha Ryan is one of those who practiced her Siren commute by taking in last night’s stellar KeySpan bill, so enjoy her shots while setting your DVR for CBS at 11:35PM tonight. Here’s Wilco’s setlist and some videos:

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No secret we’ve been excited about this one for awhile. And as the band blogged, it’s no secret that a transcode of the album is burning up torrent sites a bit earlier than anticipated. On the other hand, between live shows and television appearances, the wait for a Yellow House followup’s seemed interminable, Grizzly Bear’s pre-release maneuvering and gradual song reveals setting expectations impossibly high. “Two Weeks” and “While You Wait For The Others” suggested a marked turn to sun-dappled pop; every song we heard thereafter fucked with those expectations while giving them dimension. Before this week we’d heard enough to know it’d be pretty great. After a few spins of Veckatimest, we’ve heard enough to know this is the band’s best album to date, and that people won’t talk about them the same way after hearing it. Put simply: The new Grizzly Bear is a beast.

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Earlier this week the New York Times raised a few eyebrows with their profile on Dan Rossen’s Department Of Eagles project. It’s not surprising to see D.O.E. given such high-minded attention (they’re suddenly everywhere, from last week’s Conan to last night’s Bookeaters Benefit at Town Hall, and deservedly so). But the article uses contextually questionable quotes and insinuations as to the reason Droste was the odd man out on D.O.E. to suggest the future of Grizzly Bear, and more fundamentally Dan and Ed’s friendship, is remarkably strained. True, Dan shares some GB-related frustrations, but the rest seems selectively framed for maximum drama. (The pièce de résistance is Ed’s out-of-nowhere introductory quote, starting “Is the band going to break up? I think that’s the furthest thing from our minds.” I may not be a lawyer — oh wait, yes I am — but that’s leading the witness, NYT.)

Since then Dan’s been bent on clearing up the Times‘ distorted portrait. The night after the piece ran, D.O.E. played their first full set at the Bell House, where Dan dedicated two songs to his Grizzly partner (a cover of Jo Jo’s “Too Little Too Late” which he initially recorded as a birthday present to Ed last year, and the slightly less subtle “If You’d Forgive Me”). Today Rossen takes it one step further on the Grizzly Bear blog with a post titled “Dept of Eagles and Grizzly Bear: Friendships Are True”:

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Grizzly Bear began as the moniker for the nocturnal, lo-fi bedroom songcraft of Ed Droste in 2005, but the project has since expanded into a full fledged four person outfit.

Over the weekend, e-newsletter Thrillist sent 150 media folks to Las Vegas to drink and Twitter about their hangovers. Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste tagged along, and wrote about his Sin City weekend with the digerati for his friends at Refinery29. A ritual burial in Blue Terra Chips was his sad initiation into the sordid Dentonverse. Highlights:

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