The Candy Strypers is – despite the slightly misleading moniker – Paul Hughes from Manchester. He’s been in love with melodic guitar pop forever, but it took him until his early twenties to pick up a guitar. This is his first official release and features – as all EardrumsPop single packages do – two original compositions, a cover (Born On A Train by The Magnetic Fields), some original artwork and all these photos in a handy digital booklet. Like raucous laughter, lingering scents and good manners, it’s completely free.

Check out the video for Hymn The Girl below, download the aforementioned cover here and get the full single package here. Check out the rest of the EardrumsPop collection here too. You’ll spy some familiar faces.

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Fast Years release their debut EP (Women) on 25 June, and to celebrate they’ve given us a free download of Let Me Try to pass on to you good, good people. Take a listen, download it here and do your best to resist the urge to wax your imaginary longboard.

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Inspired by the title of an Adam Curtis documen­tary, Dan and Jon set about creating an album that would include their love of analogue equipment and experimental electronic production, shot through a lens of dark pop with glitchy, digital processing. Happiness Machines is Moscow Youth Cult’s first full-length entry into the cannon of their self-styled VHS-pop genre and is a lush show­case of the band’s songwriting and production talents featuring soundscapes that flit effortlessly from lo-fi lamentations and malfunctioning string quartets to sweaty dance floor workouts with machine samples rumbling under layers of synths, beats and tape hiss.

Check out the aforementioned video for Iris below and download Phase IV here for nowt. Like a borsch stain on a comrade’s t-shirt, it’s completely free.

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Several years in the making, Queen Of The Wave is an impressive, subversive and meticulously constructed record. For six years the band waited for the world’s largest instrument – the Great Stalacpipe Organ, built into the side of a mountain in Virginia – to be repaired, all for less than two minutes of music (see video below). The album features an array of weird and wonderful instrumentation from yesteryear – including a modified Edison ghost-hunting machine – all painstakingly restored and played to sound like snippets from ultra-rare records. Such invention and attention to detail has not only resulted in an album of astonishingly unique music, but also an inimitable aesthetic showcasing their collective imaginations and eccentric flair.

The duo are donating all the profits from the sales of the album to the John Nurminen Foundation to help protect and achieve a visible improvement in the condition of the Baltic Sea, one of the most endangered and polluted seas in the world. You can download The Storm here for less than the price of a Russian plankton egg. Do your bit to help the narwhal here too. Your ears will also benefit.

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Their raw and charismatic debut EP came out earlier this month (you can get it on vinyl here). It contains the applaudably-titled track Ctrl Alt Mexicans and is impressive, raw and charismatic, swerving haphazardly between chaos and control with rushing hearts and an effervescent swagger.

If all that sounds like your kind of bother then you’d be advised to download Pills Week here and check out the accompanying power-walking video below. Vuvuvictory.

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In the twenty years since forming and releasing their debut EP on curry-coloured vinyl they have released eight albums and worked with everyone from John Peel to Allen Ginsberg, via Noel Gallagher, Fatboy Slim and Dan The Automator, as well as charities like Mind and Christian Aid. They have always done things their way and on their terms and constantly evolved with every release.

Since reemerging from an extended hiatus in 2009 with comeback album Judy Sucks A Lemon For Breakfast, the band – nowadays comprising founder members Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayres as it’s only core members – have also released a collaboration with Punjabi folk singer Bubbley Kaur and set up the Singhles Club, a subscription service featuring a series of musically diverse collaborations and exclusive digital artwork. Their latest album (Urban Turban) drops next week (order it direct from the band here). Continuing the dual themes of collaboration and diversity that run throughout their back catalogue, there’s a different artist – ranging from SoKo to Kay Kwong to kids from Castle Hill Primary School, Lancashire – featured on each track.

Do yourself a favour and download Dedicated (Second Sky & Thomas Blondet Remix) here. Like everything Cornershop do, it will almost certainly not be what you’re expecting. Ditto the video for Milkin’ It below.

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Portrait: Alison Wonderland

Her latest album (Savior, out 15 May) draws from a variety of disparate influences, mixing up folk, pop, trip-hop and Italian disco into a subtle substance that defies the stark, dark geography of her homeland. With all of the instruments played by Sansa and long-term collaborator Janne Oinas, a striking sense of intricacy and intimacy flows throughout.

You can download Waiting For The Sky here. Like an unbonded polymer, it’s completely free. The video for Black Brick Wall is below.

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If you look at the photos below I’m sure you’ll be able to ascertain Binary’s general vibe. To hear a different take on what they do then you can download the Stay+ remix of Modern Man here. Check out the video below too, but remember that there are only 10 types of people in the world; those who understand binary, and those who don’t. Let us know how you get on.

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Mr Fogg will be providing another taste of what is to come from his forthcoming sophomore album (Eleven) with new single A Little Letting Go, released through Kicking Ink/Kompakt on 28 May. Built from spiralling layers of choral samples and intricate beat production, A Little Letting Go picks up where previous single and blogosphere favourite Stay Out Of The Sun left off, but this time sets the electronics against a soaring vocal melody and bittersweet lyrics.

The album was conceived at Fogg’s Oxford studio and subsequently completed during three trips to Greenhouse Studios in Reykjavik in collaboration with Valgeir Sigurdsson (who has previously worked with Bjork, Feist and Damon Albarn). You can download the aforementioned single (Stay Out Of The Sun) here and watch the video below. Like sunburn, it’s completely free. Like audio aloe vera, it soothes even the saltiest soul.

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Having already built up an extensive back catalogue of remixes for the likes of Au Palais, Kool Thing, Visions Of Trees (See their intraview here) and Worship, their self-produced debut EP Hexed dropped last month. Recorded, mixed and mastered against a backdrop of sleeplessness, subsistence and gnawing uncertainty, smooth atmospherics give way to harsh-noise influenced destruction, and disaffection and hard-clipped industrialised percussion stomp brazenly next to clean and diminutive guitar phrasings, whilst old and cracked drum machines wince to a halt like wounded animals.

Download Chase(R) here. It’s free if you think you can blink or are a little bit scared.

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