Guardian Music — (RCA)There's enough falsetto-vocaled synthpop currently emanating from the Antipodes (see also: Empire of the Sun, The Naked and Famous) to comprise a mini-trend; Melbourne duo Gypsy & the Cat's twist is their soft-rock streak, which enrobes silky e... more info

Guardian Music — August 1976: Number 11 in our series of the 50 key events in the history of indie musicIt helped that Nick Lowe's debut solo single was a great record – So It Goes was a brilliant, breezily craven rip-off of Thin Lizzy's The Boys Are Back in Town ... more info

Totally Fuzzy — Aja (pronounced like "Asia") is the sixth album by the jazz-rock band Steely Dan. Originally released in 1977, it became the group's best-selling album. Peaking at #3 on the U.S. charts and #5 in the United Kingdom, it was the band's first p... more info

Guardian Music — Recording engineer who collaborated with Steely Dan for 30 yearsThe albums of Steely Dan were renowned for their sophisticated musical content and for their benchmark-setting audio quality. An indispensable contributor to the latter was their recordi... more info

Totally Fuzzy — Can't Buy a Thrill is the first album by Steely Dan. Originally released in 1972, the album was a huge success. It went gold, and then platinum, peaking at #17 on the charts. In 2003, the album was ranked number 238 on Rolling Stone magazine's list ... more info

Totally Fuzzy — At their best, duos are a uniquely formidable type of creative chemistry. Whether Simon & Garfunkel or Pet Shop Boys, Steely Dan or Soft Cell, an alchemical magic occurs when two simpatico minds go in pursuit of a singular result. Torquil Campbell ... more info

Guardian Music — Indie bands and session musicians were once seen as incompatible, but with the likes of Calexico and Broken Social Scene blurring the boundaries, the freelancer is back in fashionYou would think the indie band and the session musician could not be mo... more info

Guardian Music — As part of our new online city guides, we asked music experts to compile a playlist to their city. Here Chris Keating of Yeasayer cues up the tracks for New York CityWhile compiling our new online guides to the major cities of the world, we thought i... more info

Totally Fuzzy — Okkervil River's last proper album, 2008's The Stand Ins, was nothing if not approachable. Top to bottom, the record was packed with sunny melodies, strummy riffs and shout-along refrains that anyone could sing. (To drive the point home, the band r... more info

Guardian Music — Our music team pick the songs or albums, old or new, they just can't turn offCharlie Haden Quartet West Sophisticated Ladies The great American bassist and bandleader Charlie Haden, a key figure in Ornette Coleman's free-jazz revolution of the 50s an... more info