Ex-Ponytail guitarist Dustin Wong’s spacey new jam is called “Pink Diamond,” and the track’s accompanying visual fits nicely with the track’s blown-out, psychedelic vibe. It’s like an indie rock-centric Spirograph! Did you know that there’s a direct correlation between the decline of Spirograph and the rise in gang activity? Watch the video download the song below.

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In September we toasted the best new bands of 2011. Bright futures for those guys! But come this time of year it’s also important to remember the musical groups who called it a day. Some of these acts were taken from us before their time, while others imploded due to overwhelming apathy. Herewith our look at all of them, good and bad and who?. Thanks again to Matt Neatock for the video production. Please hold your applause until the end.

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Sadly, the joyous Baltimore art-punk band Ponytail is no more. They’ve broken up, for real this time. In a statement (reprinted below), they cite the difficulty of touring now that all their members live across the country. And they’ve left us with one final gift: An aquatic-themed video for “Easy Peasy,” the manic sugar-rush single from their 2011 album Do Whatever You Want To All The Time. The video intersperses live video with assorted found footage. Most of the video seems to concern sea creatures and people jumping into bodies of water, but we also get a quick shot of a hippo chasing a cheetah, which is so badass. Willy Siegel directs, and bears certain relation to Ponytail-singer Molly. Watch it and download the song 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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The return of Ponytail’s giddily spastic quirk-rock may help break the self-serious dubstep doldrums some beat-phobic blogreading friends of mine have experienced this last half-year or so. “Celebrate The Body Eclectic…” was a similar palette cleansing lead single Ponytail’s last time out, that one clocking in at over seven minutes; at just under six minutes “Easy Peasy” is a little more concise, or perhaps a little less idea-stuffed, than that. Which is not to say it is lacking ideas, or that it is particularly concise: again Ponytail find a way to make sprawling riff-vamps, oddball song structures, and child-like, often unintelligible yipping/speaking/singing fit together like very logical aesthetic choices. There are tempo shifts and busy drum fills, guitars that noodle purposefully and shimmer around the basic central chord movement, and just enough words sung clearly to give a sense of what they’re on about: “Why… always running out of time.” Big question, and maybe the reason this one never does hit seven minutes.

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They don’t call it the dead of winter for nothing. (Ooof.) Sorry, but there’s no easy segue from our holiday cheer into a post about the bummers of this year. Autumn is harvest, when we pick the new crop. And now we look back on those that bands calling this year their last, that withered and died, at least until one of their members racks up enough gambling debt to force the others to reunite and generate revenue anew. It’s the circle of life. So, for now, here is our montage memorializing those fallen heroes of 2010.

R.I.P., bands. See you at ATP 2030.

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“Talking Walking Cloud” is a bonus track for Dustin Wong’s forthcoming Infinite Love. You may know Wong as guitarist/co-founder of Baltimore spastics Ponytail (and a member of Ecstatic Sunshine). Things may seem mellower here, but in the end, they’re just as frantic. As a starting point, it’s Wong with a single guitar, a few pedals (loop, octave, distortion, etc.), some drum machine, and inspiration from a line of John Fahey’s: “I was playing guitar but I heard an orchestra in my head. So I was really composing for a full orchestra.” Then there’s the heady conceptual arc surrounding the overall collection.

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Village Voice’s annual Coney Island rock extravaganza turned 10 on Saturday and went down as sweaty and free as years past. Things kicked off with Dom in the early afternoon, and wrapped up many bottles of sunscreen later with Matt & Kim and Holy Fuck. In between: Ted Leo, Ponytail, Harlem, Pains Of Being Pure Of Heart, Surfer Blood, and more. Sean O’Kane delivers these pics from the fest.

ATP was the year’s finest festival. We’ve already covered that. But the band performances are only half the (All Tomorrow’s) party. For a weekend, the mountain resort that inspired Dirty Dancing is a surreal estate, overrun by music-heads and artists; everyone’s in the same boat (some literally in boats), enjoying the same kitschy diversions. You’ll see Alan Vega shooting pool at 3AM and a few hours later Nick Cave checking his email while Frankie Don performs cheesy ’60s covers to an empty lounge. Worlds be colliding.

We really wanted to share the experience and document all the Borscht Belt family fun had between sets. So we grabbed our pocket cams, all unprofessional-like, and treated Animal Collective to a shopping spree in the gift shop, No Age to a vegan meal in the food tent (they were joined by a tripping bro known all weekend as Monster Man — please enjoy the shrapnel of corn puke near his lip), Internet poker enthusiast Bradford Cox to a few hands in the executive gambling suite run by Steve Albini, and Boredoms’ Boadrum 9 drummers Zach Hill, Hisham Bharoocha, Aaron Moore, and Jeremy Hymen to some arcade games.

Here’s the best way to spend $125 at ATP NY.

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After being ousted from McCarren Park when the city decided to spent $50MM to restore The Pool as an actual pool, Jelly NYC found a new home for their free summer show series in the upscale hipster haven that is Williamsburg at the East River State Park (aka the Williamsburg Waterfront). It’s just an eight-week stay; next year the Parties will need to find a new home again. But for one more set of Sundays, at least, the Burg’s sense of indie-cultural entitlement will be rooted in boozy reality.

The long-awaited lineup was recently announced and looks great, and yesterday people finally got to give the grounds a test run and Tweet their sentiments. I was stuck in traffic returning to the city and missed the fun, but some 6,000 people made it on time, including our photographer Natasha Ryan and the NYT‘s Ben Sisario, who talked up the “postcard-perfect view of midtown Manhattan,” along with some of the drawbacks of a show like this being held on State property (bands were warned that excessive swearing could threaten future shows; the Slip N Slide was deemed too dangerous; etc.). Aside from the State’s Campaign To Limit Fun, everyone I’ve talked to had positive reviews and thought it compared favorably to McCarren, if lacking some of that space’s unique charms. Gothamist has a photo gallery that covers the layout, and we have a gallery that covers the bands and attending bros that made it to yesterday’s summer kickoff.