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Weekend Earworms: Houndmouth & Manchester Orchestra

An estimated 98% of us experience earworms. Despite the annoying times that we can’t get a chorus or a hook of an overplayed pop song out of our heads, getting a really good earworm stuck can be one of the best things ever.

We here at Nerdist are dead-set on bringing you those types of songs, if only for the weekend. We’ll be scouring the internet for the best earworms we can shove into your meaty brains!

For this week’s earworms, I was able to tap into the mind of one one of the best senior editors of Nerdist named Dan Casey, and of all my editors named Dan Casey, he is definitely somewhere in the top 5. As most of you know, Dan is the host of The Dan Cave, author of a few books that you should definitely read and – of course – pulls off pizza print better than most could ever hope to.

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Dan also has a very eclectic music taste that rivals even mine. When asking for suggestions, he gave me quite a few, none of which had anything to do with each other. It pained me not run with my favorite suggestion of his – which was Junior M.A.F.I.A. – it’ll have to wait for when I can give the proper respect to a full-on hip-hop earworms. Instead, his first suggestion in particular was one I didn’t know and yet somehow seemed really familiar. So, of course, it’s now on steady rotation.

Houndmouth – Sedona

Indiana band Houndmouth has been “on the scene” as the kids say since about 2011 and been tearing up stages with their folk rock stylings. You may be familiar with their track and their Wes Anderson-esque video for their track “Say It” that we featured earlier this month. “Sedona” is the tune that kicks off the very same sophomore record Little Neon Limelight. The upbeat indie folk rock song couldn’t be better for an album’s first song. And for whatever reason, lead singer Matt Myers’ vocals reminded me of…

Manchester Orchestra – Simple Math

Slightly less folk than Houndmouth and considerably darker in tone (at least for this song) “Simple Math” by Atlanta’s Manchester Orchestra just happened to come to mind. If the bittersweet beauty of the song wasn’t enough to hook you, the video for it is absolutely gorgeous. The concept of life flashing before your eyes prior to your ultimate demise has never been done as well as it is in this video. The video plays with the idea with re-lived flashbacks and some pretty neat effects of the physics of the crash effecting them. The video accomplishes some fairly dark story telling while somehow remaining completely heartwarming. Should “Simple Math” not do anything for you, take comfort in the fact that lead singer Andy Hull once gave the world a folk version of the theme to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. So there’s that.

I realize this week’s earworms lacked an overall theme but at the same time is what the article should be at it’s core. Songs that, for whatever reason, get stuck in our (my) brain for a period of time. I’m genuinely interested in what these songs lead your brain to listen to. Lets start marking those pathways. Let me know in the comments below what songs you sought out after listening to these.

Blake Rodgers writes for Nerdist from Chicago IL where he lives happily with his Guinness World Record for High Fives. You can be his pal by following him on Twitter (@TheBlakeRodgers)

 

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