Have you heard Cleveland’s Cloud Nothings have a new album out next Tuesday?  It was produced by Steve Albini.  You may have heard of him.  Maybe you read the interview where the Cloud Nothings’ Dylan Baldi dished on Albini’s Scrabble playing ways.  It’s also a rockier and edgier sound for a band who’ve made their name by playing carefree, lo-fi pop.  Maybe you heard the first two tracks (“Stay Useless” and “No Future/No Past”) released from the forthcoming Attack on Memory.  Or, maybe you’ve heard the album stream.  That’s out there, too.  While they haven’t reached the everywhere, every channel hype of The Black Keys, I have a hard time recalling the last Cleveland band to receive so much pre-release hype.  Another banger like “No Sentiment,” certainly won’t derail that hype train.

MP3: Cloud Nothings – No Sentiment

A contemporary of Jay Reatard, Digital Leather’s Shawn Foree has had releases on Fat Possum, Goner Records, Jay Reatard’s Shattered Records, and now he’s moving on to FDH Music for his next full length, Modern Problems, due out on February 14th.  The first track released for that set, “Young Doctors in Love” provides a tempting peak into Foree’s brand of synth-punk.  In addition to the thin, electronic beats and distorted guitars, there’s a hint of honky-tonk, as if The Kings of Leon were a living room band, not an arena act, and weren’t a such a bunch of pricks.  That’s a big if, I know.  Still, “Young Doctor’s in Love” is one rad jam.

MP3: Digital Leather – Young Doctors in Love

Brooklyn garage punks, XRay Eyeballs also have a new full length due out in the near future with Splendor Squalor dropping February 28th on Kanine Records.  Lead single, “X,” finds the quartet further refining their sound with the inclusion of dreamy, ’80s synths and a bass line borrowed from the play book of New Order’s Peter Hook.

MP3: Xray Eyeballs – X