Last year I wrote a blog post detailing neat gift ideas a mere 10 days before Christmas, because well….that’s when I was buying Christmas gifts. I adore gift hunting and giving, and I’m admittedly cocky about my ability to bestow a unique gift perfectly tailored to the personality and interests of the giftee (true story: I gave my friend Cassie this dinosaur muffin pan today and she unabashedly flipped over it in the middle of Caribou coffee – ergo, I rock). However, I am completely horrible about waiting to the last minute to go shopping for gifts – and I feel that if you’re going to give someone their gift late, it sure as hell better one up all the gifts they received on time.

So here we are, three and a half shopping days before Christmas, and all I’ve purchased is the aforementioned dino muffin pan and some delightfully weird art for my husband.  If you, like me, are still hunting for that perfect gift that’s really going to send your pal/family member/significant other over the edge, providing you the warm holiday buzz that bringing others happiness yields, then scroll down and find some inspiration! With the help of Amber Valentine, I’ve compiled another list of truly awesome gifts for the eclectic, eccentric, and intrinsically hip people in your life that will help you to belatedly bestow holiday joy in style.

-Mylynda Guthrie

Amber’s Picks

The world’s best Canadian indie rock charity has a hoodie that’s
perfect for any banjo loving hipster. Support a good cause in style!

Yellowbird Project Hoodie

For the indie rock fan who has everything, give the gift of new music
all year round with a Daytrotter membership! And if you’re a
cheapskate, you can spring for a one month membership for your pals.
It’s only $2!

Daytrotter Membership

Almost everyone has an iphone these days but me, right? Well, since I
can’t enjoy these sweet classic rock phone covers, you should gift
them to the biggest Beatles and Bowie fans in your life, respectively.

Urban Outfitters Bowie iPhone Case

From the Ramones to Tupac to Kiss, Funko has something for everyone in
their line of Pop figurines. I don’t know about you, but I think these
would be just the thing to spice up any boring desk top.

Funko.com

Wilco coffee mugs!

Wilco Coffee Mugs
Perfect to drink your Wilco coffee out of!

Kanye West’s twitter is one of the more meme-worthy things to happen
on the internet since the advent of social networking. What living
room is complete until they have a little bit of Kanye’s trademark
egotistical witticisms hand stitched and framed on the wall?

Supervelma Etsy Shop

Another hand crafted etsy gem are these cookies that feature one of
the best characters on television, Ron Swanson from NBC’s indie-tastic
Parks & Rec. I mean, the show did name drop Neutral Milk Hotel twice
so it’s obviously got cred.

Whippedbakeshop Etsy Shop

Mylynda’s Picks

I started going to Modcloth.com for the clothes, but I stayed for the whimsical home accessories.

These classic yet unconventional mugs come with an owl, fox….or shark. Amazing.

Beau-tea-ful Surprise Mug in Owl

I also lust for Modcloth’s carefully plucked collection of DIY craft books, like this all-encompassing book of indie-inspired crafts from Jo Waterhouse.

Indie Craft book

Antique frames can cost a pretty penny, but this tin frame from Anthropologie can be had for $28.

Weathered Tin Frame

These chalkboard skulls from Etsy seller iamhome come in a variety of colors, but in my home we live by the mantra “when in doubt, paint it flat black.”

iamhome on Etsy

Dinner and a Murder has several kits for hosting a murder mystery party, as well as costumes, music, and game packs available for instant download to help you throw a New Year’s Eve party that no one will soon forget.

Dinner and a Murder

Print media is not dead. Gift a magazine subscription the easy way – pay online and have it sent straight to their home. I like the element of surprise in giving magazine subscriptions, and getting an unsolicited issue of AMP is so much better than ValuPak coupons for new gutters and fruit baskets.

AMP magazine                                         Filter Magazine

As ThinkGeek writes in their description “First the spirit inhabits the skull, then it inhabits you.”

Doomed Crystal Shotglass

…millions of crushes are reignited.

You heard it here first folks….or second, or third, if you read US Weekly and/or Pitchfork. Hell, you probably heard it here tenth, but I am writing about it anyway.

Today America’s most beloved hipster starlet and the frontman of what once was one of the best indie bands of our generation announced their divorce. Yep – Zooey Deschanel and Ben Gibbard are apparently no more. No joke, the news of their separation did make me slightly and inexplicably sad (maybe it’s the mushy newlywed in me)…but what struck me even more was the amount of mainstream media attention this is getting considering these are supposed to be “indie” stars. There are hundreds and in some cases thousands of comments on each of the major sites that broke news of the split today, even though many of the articles went live just two to three hours ago.

Anyways, despite some adorable tweets back and forth in recent months (including Gibbard repeatedly hailing his wife’s talent and beauty), the post-couple has said that the split was “mutual and amicable.” Jokes abound pertaining to finally receiving the next great Death Cab for Cutie album in the aftermath of the split.

The once wed talents performing in November of last year.

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-Mylynda Nellermoe

Reviewing Zunk is like reviewing a gryphon. Or, like trying to differentiate a gryphon from a griffin; is it the noble, regal gryphon that has human speaking abilities and graces church pillars? Or is it the griffin – the breathtaking, animalistic beast that survives on its instincts? What am I even supposed to examine and contrast it to – an eagle? A lion? That is if I can even find one. Those damn things are elusive…

Zunk is nearly equally as illusory and esoteric as the gryphon (griffin). He’s a few tracks on Bandcamp. He’s a disappearing and reappearing set on SoundCloud. He’s a zipped folder in a private, unmarked email. And he is rarely identifiable by ear alone, due to a zeal for multigenre exploration even within the space of one track.

A trip to the Zunk SoundCloud is a perfect example of what I’m attempting to illustrate here. The first seat on his tracks page, “Assault the Vowel,” shows off a throaty voice made for guttural rock ballads set against an acoustic guitar. The very next track has euro-trash swagger, and several spaces down is a fantastic, meticulous cover of “Strawberry Fields Forever.” My personal favorite tunes to be found on Zunk’s SoundCloud don’t even have official titles. “Wednesday, April 6^th, 2011 (excerpt)” begins with the words “I think I’m going to blow your car up (that’s right), so maybe you would walk with me” on top of an accordion having a tryst with an urban soundtrack of sirens and grinding train wheels. “Friday, April 8^th, 2011” is an awesome and absurd gypsy-like traipse, also featuring the accordion.

A constant in Zunk’s lyrically driven pieces is an evident affinity for storytelling. Which stories are autobiographical is blurry, and each yarn has a dark tint. His singer-songwriter pieces seem to evade and reject his often bubbly and bright electronic alter-ego.  Some great, albeit harder to find electro-indie songs include the Bandcamp collaboration between Zunk and Render the Galaxy “Hyperparoxysms” and original piece “I Heard You Were a Mess.”

Zunk – I Heard You Were a Mess

In the span of a Zunk listening session, one thing really crystallizes in my mind: he knows how to craft a song from beginning to end. No matter the genre, he has a mysterious aptitude for structure and beat. A basic instinct.

He’s kind of like a griffin.

That’s right, it’s the one day a year record stores and artists big or small break out their best box sets and witty t shirts, and urge you to drive past Best Buy to instead swarm the aisles at your nearest independent music store.

Artists often offer up debut or long coveted releases at promotional prices during record store day, and participating stores have the opportunity to order and pass on the savings and the experience to you, the music lovin’ shopper. As of late, shopping local seems to becoming more trendy than ever. If you’re a record lover, then you probably know it’s not trendy to support indie shop owners and musicians – it’s just plain old common sense.

To find your local participating RSD store, go here.

If you’re in my area of Cincinnati, I highly suggest Shake It Records. They’re hosting a meet and greet with Talib Kweli at 1 p.m., an acoustic set from Wussy at 7 p.m., and an in-store show from Cincinnati’s Foxy Shazam at 9 p.m. to end the

Even 2011 Record Store Day Official Ambassador Ozzy Osbourne thinks you should go:

I walked to my car at 4:51 a.m. today, hunched and shivering against the persevering Ohio winter wind. I cleared just enough space in the windshield’s lacy frost to make out the familiar corners and stops on my daily route, and gently encouraged my car to accelerate towards work. I was idling at the day’s first red light when the silence hit me…I had forgotten my cds.

“Well, I guess I can turn on the radio,” I thought. After all, there were still millions of people listening to radio stations every day – so listening to popular radio for the remaining 8 minutes of my drive shouldn’t have been torturous.”You’re not that condescending, Mylynda!” I proclaimed, and hit the dial.

Ah, wrong!

I have somehow absorbed enough of the current state of pop-culture to recognize Katy Perry’s voice, so it registered immediately that I was hearing the kitschy star. I listened in sleepy bemusement to an electronically tweaked melody about her wanting to be kissed by an alien and infected with his poison and shot with his supersonic lasers, but the real turn for the worse came when a then-unidentified-male voice chimed in with the following:

“I know a bar out in Mars
Where they driving spaceships instead of cars
Cop a prada space suit about the stars
Getting stupid hah straight up out the jars
Pockets on shrek, rockets on deck
Tell me whats next? Alien sex.
Imma disrobe you
Then Imma probe you
See I abducted you
So I tell you what to do”

Apparently I AM A TOTAL MUSIC SNOB. How did this happen? I was raised by parents who didn’t even listen to classic stuff like the golden oldies or Bob Dylan; my mom’s favorite band is Journey and my dad listens to every popular song on radio and television from the ’70s to today…I don’t think I have actually ever seen him in possession of an album. My brother was in to what my dad was in to, then he was in to rap, then he was in to Taking Back Sunday and Dashboard Confessional (because I was…aww, those were the golden years), and now he swears by techno. He thinks it’s the effing bees’ knees, and there is no telling him otherwise.

I wouldn’t rather bleed out my ears then hear my preferred genres like I know some metalheads or classical enthusiasts would, but I still think most popular music today is completely awful. Once in a while though something I love crosses over and I can’t help feeling possessive and sad for its departure into megastardom. For instance, I became enamored with Mumford & Sons when I stumbled on a great performance from Minnesota Public Radio’s The Current’s YouTube channel. I eagerly played it for my alt-bluegrass loving betrothed, and we downloaded the album, listening to it all night long and dancing around our living room. Not two weeks later, Mumford & Sons played the Grammys and now they’re all over the place. A 40-something business woman who is usually a complete snot to me while ordering her “skinny vanilla latte, NO foam, seriously no foam” picked it up the other day, letting me know she “loved this new band” and telling me I should listen to it. I didn’t know whether to feel happy for her that a little bit of wonderful had crept in to her life and now her cd player, or reproachful.

However, I guess cliches go all ways. It’s not often you hear a Belle and Sebastian fan hailing Swingin’ Utters or an Iron and Wine enthusiast praising the genius of Stormtroopers of Death.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this, to be honest. I’m sure I could go on forever and we could run in circles in the comments thread as well over which genre is best or why popular music is so overwhelmingly popular, and what is wrong with society today. Or we could wax about how we should be worrying about earthquakes and oil spills and poverty and not fighting over music – one of the only things that is supposedly universally binding – and I do agree with all that to some degree. This is an evergreen topic explored by many people, and there’s really no conclusion because music is subjective. I want to say I’m a true appreciator of music and art, and that I can see the value in any music and appreciate it for what it is, and what the artist was going for. I want to say that I’m not a snob.

But I just can’t help it. I hate that anyone could love that stupid song.

Listen, Or I’ll Forget You: A Constructive Disadvantage

by Zak Freed

There was always something there…  and in such a way that where even the everyday, common and predictable operations from her would introduce some sort of endearing liveliness into my corpse with more soul than an entire legion of angels could ever hope to imbue me with, even in their most assertive moments of trying.

Inspiration would saturate me on all fronts from every dynamistic movement made and I always knew exactly where it came from; her stories consistently meshed right into mine – with a flow heavier than the worst of any woman on earth – and I could taste that disgusting tension from miles away, like a hypersensitive apocalypse of a storm approaching the quaint shore at my side. A constant stream of lightning bolts striking while proper modes and theories behind them would melt around a spontaneously picked tempo, leaving my heart to vomit all over the gritty tape that was spinning in the background. What beauty! What luscious waves of light! She swallowed me whole and knew that she had.

“This one’s for you” was a phrase that would often ride the current into most tunes, splashing about with the extraordinarily influential vibe that was always present behind it. The whiskey in my left hand would shape provocative motions in sight of the cigarette in my right while I’d make myself very openly dedicated to arranging emotional points for the siren… the focus, the muse:

A lambent and sometimes leather-clad blackbird creature of sorts that would slither up the back of my chair to nest itself into my shoulder for optimal control over the movements of my upper limbs around whatever instrument happened to be in my lap at the time. She would chirp bad news into my ear more than often, but always had words of hope to follow up with, you know… and I’d hate to think of anything bad ever befalling her, but I don’t think that she’s able to get hurt. Even still, she would let me know of the protection that sounds, in general, would provide her with – and how necessary they really were.

With everything said, there are still so many things that I wish she would have spoken up more about; good or bad. What a shame, to have to ask the “What if?” questions after such invigorating experiences have already been digested.

2011 Dailies: February, Selected Works by Zunk B-Sides

You’ve almost done it all, though – somehow – and you’ll do it all again in a different way here pretty soon. Keep sinking your teeth into me… continue to let me know what it is to feel so dreadfully cursed  from your spells that I can’t even think straight. Let me understand, without a word said, that I’m still able to stab you in the chest while you do the same to me for nothing more than the gruesome, comedic value that will sonorously circumvent it.

There are these guys. They’re twins. They like tea. They like to cook. Oh, and they recently released a great EP.

When Erik and Joe Dueming aren’t busy wrapping up their time at Columbia College in Chicago, they’re touring and working to get their art out there on their own terms with their band The Window Theatre. The Window Theatre, which is generally a duo of the Duemigs with other live band members revolving in and out, recently released the album Away. The self-released Away is rapturous and tender with strong traces of folk and chamber pop music present in the four tracks.

The Window Theatre – Away

The Duemigs have definitely cultivated a new fan (me) with the release of Away. Though the title track seems to be the prevailing favorite on the guys’ social networking sites, my personal preference is for the more cheeky and complex  last track “Almost Home” (which reminds me of The Format’s “Dog Problems” in a very complementary way). A whole LP of songs like “Almost Home” would be well worth a piece of anyone’s paycheck.

Away can be streamed or bought for the criminally low price of $1 on The Window Theatre’s bandcamp page, and you can read a full biography and view other media from The Window Theatre at www.thewindowtheatre.com.

The Veils’ Finn Andrews is one of those rare artists whose passions and eccentricities stretch so far that you cannot simply hope to understand him, you just have to sit back and enjoy the end product. One of the hallmarks of their stage shows is Andrews possessed stage performance, convulsions and speaking in tongues oft included. The UK based indie group released a new ep, The Troubles of the Brain, and three weeks ago a video for the single “The Stars Came Out Once the Lights Went Out” followed. View it below and spread it around – this is a great band for you to be in the know about.