The New Music

The first batch of bands have been announced for the annual Toronto Island Concert and this summer is a special one: Pavement are the headliners!!! Well, co-headliners. Along with indie rock’s greatest band of all time, local boys Broken Social Scene will also co-headline, along with Band of Horses. Pulling out all the stops, it seems. More bands will be announced in the coming months, but for all the details click here.

English eccentrics Mystery Jets spoke to NME.com and revealed that they’re third album is set for a March release (in the UK, we assume). Sounds good, but unfortunately they decided to axe a contribution by a penguin-mask-wearing bagpipe player they hired. Damn.

Rustic indie darlings Okkervil River have backed legendary rock’n'roll crazy Roky Erickson on his new solo album. The former 13th Floor Elevators frontman will release True Love Cast Out All Evil via Anti- on April 20th.

British indie band Let’s Wrestle have signed with Merge Records. The label will release their King Crimson-baiting debut album, In the Court of the Wrestling Let’s, on March 23rd. You can get yourself a free download of the track “We are the Men You’ll Grow to Love Soon” by right-clicking here.

Finally, in case you haven’t gone out and bought it yet, you can now stream Owen Pallett’s Heartland and see why it’s the best album of 2010 so far. Check out his MySpace page to hear it.