[Outside Lands 2012] Our Most Aniticipated Artist of the Festival

Today marks the beginning of this year's Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco, the fifth edition of the cultural highlight. SKOA will be attending the festival this year, and each day leading up to the festival we will be dishing out a feature focused on the bands set to appear at Outside Lands. Today, the final day of our preview coverage, we look to answer one important question: who is our most anticipated artist of the festival?

With such an incredible and diverse lineup, Outside Lands offers something for everyone. Stevie Wonder, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Metallica, Foo Fighers, Sigur Rós, Jack White, Beck, The Kills, Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, Passion Pit, Santigold, MSTRKRFT, The Walkmen, YACHT, Andrew Bird, you name it, there is a band for each and every attendee to get excited about. For us, though, there is one band that sticks out at the forefront, and that is Australian psych rock outfit Tame Impala.

Ever since Tame Impala dropped their debut LP Innerspeaker back in 2010, the psychedelic stylings of the Perth band have never left my eardrums for more than a few days. Somehow, they have perfectly captured what was so good about psychedelic rock in the '60s and '70s, the carefree attitude and the general sense that all that needs to be done is to play the hell out of some fucking instruments and put on a damn good show. When listening to Tame Impala, it's not uncommon to feel as if you're listening to Eric Clapton, transporting you to a time when the biggest names in rock were at their peak. This new wave of neo-psychedelia has been rising since the early to mid-1990s, but Tame Impala directly utilizes the styles and sounds of the 1960s, and they pull it off so well.

For every band that is performing at Outside Lands, the collective love we have for Tame Impala trumps even the biggest names. Hearing their brand of psychedelic rock in a live setting sounds infinitely more tempting than any of the other offerings at the festival. Call me crazy, but the idea of dancing under the influence of who knows how many narcotics to the addicting psychedelic soundscapes of Tame Impala seems like an amazing experience to me. In fact, I'm more sane for thinking so.

[Watch] Prof - "Peep Show" (Video)

GAMPOS! Stophouse's (should only be pronounced with a shout) Prof is back on the prowl with his wild new video for the King Gampo cut "Peep Show" which features Russian clowns, booze, Prof being a skeezy awesome freak, glowing hand and shakeweights. Not much more to say about this other than it should be played at every strip club, even though i've never been to one. Anyways...here it is. King Gampo is out now and you download it for free here. Support it if you like it.

[$FREE.99] Yak Ballz - 'Gas Galaxy'

It's been nearly a year since we heard anything from Yak Skywalker who was releasing his new album Gas Galaxy track by track each month. But after several months of silence Yak has decided to drop his brand new LP for free. That's right, free. Take a listen to The Weathermen member's album below, co-produced by the homie Chapter 7 and features dope artwork by Oliver Cartwright as well as remixes by Lunice and Circuit Bored. Just some good hip hop for your weekend. Enjoy.

[Listen] Minus The Bear - "Steel and Blood"

Check out another track from Minus The Bear's forthcoming album Infinity Overhead dropping this month on the 28th via Dangerbird Records in the US and Big Scary Monsters Recording in the UK this September. Peep the lead track "Steel and Blood" below courtesy of Big Scary Monsters. And if you haven't heard the band's previous single "Diamond Lightning" you can peep that here.

[Watch] Electric Guest - "Ritual Union" (Little Dragon Cover)

Asa Taccone and Matthew Compton better know as the band Electric Guest head down under and pay a visit to the Triple J studios for this week's Like A Version to cover Little Dragon's title track of their latest album, Ritual Union. Check out the guys absolutely killing this cover in the video above and if you haven't picked up their Danger Mouse produced debut album Mondo, we highly suggest you do that as well.

[Listen] Jessie Ware - "Sweet Talk"

It's been a lovely ride to watch Jessie Ware tease us in recent months in the lead up to her highly anticipated album, Devotion, which will be released on August 20th via PMR Records. Today we get another track/tease from her, this one is titled "Sweet Talk" and is a definite little treat on a Friday afternoon sat in a stuffy office. 

We've already heard her tracks "110%", "What You Won't Do For Love" and "Wildest Moments" so why not pre-order the album if you like them all over here?

[Listen] Just Tell Me That You Want Me - 'A Tribute To Fleetwood Mac' (Full Album Stream)

We've heard a couple of songs from Just Tell Me You Want Me - A Tribute To Fleetwood Mac over the past few months. Today we get to stream the entire project which features covers of Fleetwood Mac from the likes of Tame Impala, MGMT, St. Vincent, Washed Out, The Kills and Lykke Li. Stream it in full below and from the 14th of August you can pick up a copy of it over here.

[Watch] Muse - "Unsustainable" (Video)

If you follow me personally on Twitter, or SKOA, you may have seen me tweet a link last night to a new Muse track. The track in question is the one everybody dreaded, the dubstep track they previewed in their album trailer for The 2nd Law. Yesterday evening the band took to Twitter once more and announced a pre-order for the deluxe version of their album. Pricey as it may be, it came with two exclusive videos. One was available immediately and the second is to be made available to buyers on October the 1st when the album drops. 

As a rather big Muse fan I was hesitant to firstly pre-order and secondly hear the track, "Unsustainable". Ok, so the band wanted to experiment and those of you who've seen Muse live will know Matt likes to mess around with his built in Kaoss pad and Fuzz Factory but the band making dubstep via their instruments just didn't sit too well with me. The result isn't as bad I'd expected but I'm still nervous to hear the rest of the album. From early listens some journalists have had, this seems to be the only track of this nature. We will wait to see how the rest of the album sounds when it's released in October. 

Rumours have also stated that Muse's new single "Madness" was to be given a play on Zane Lowe's show on Monday 13th of August but it appears it has now been pushed back until the 20th. We'll update you as and when we have new.