Episode 2: Playing with Arcade Fire

Hi, I'm Nate Lanxon and this Encoded, bringing you the latest music downloads, videos and stories from across the web.

With their 19th century Puritan vibe and their American Gothic demeanour, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Arcade Fire had never heard of the internet, let alone set up a Facebook account, but it would seem that the Canadian six-piece alt-indie heroes are a lot more web savvy than their buckles and braces would suggest.

To promote their latest single, 'Neon Bible', the band have released an online-only interactive video for the song, where users can point and click around the head and hands of a very morose-looking Win Butler, making the singer perform all manner of supernatural deeds while he croons the album title track. Go over to www.beonlineb.com to check it out for yourself.

If you'd prefer a more traditional Arcade Fire experience, the band are currently touring Europe, finishing off with three nights at Ally Pally in mid-November, which will quite probably be the hottest tickets in town. By town, I mean eBay.

With hot tickets in mind, one of the biggest buzzes coming from across the Atlantic right now is Black Kids. The Florida five-piece head over the water in December for their first ever UK shows, playing four consecutive dates in London between the 5th and the 8th of December.

The band has already drawn favourable comparisons to The Go Team and Arcade Fire with their high energy, multi-instrumentation, and when their debut single drops later this month, expect to hear their tinny din rattling out of all the cool kids' headphones.

And generating just as much of a palaver over here are Metronomy, who have just confirmed that they have signed to Because Records, with second album, 'Nights Out', set for release on the ever-growing indie in March 2008.

After a summer full of memorable festival appearances, the mathtronic trio from Brighton had A&R men from up and down the country swooning, so their decision to saddle up alongside Justice and Charlotte Gainsbourg in the Because stable will have been a blow to the majors who coveted them.

As if to prove their 'so-hot-right-now' status, Metronomy will be touring with Kate Nash, Bloc Party and CSS, all before Christmas, so there is plenty of opportunity to catch the band before they become suitably and inevitably massive in 2008.

Festival news now, and in the grand tradition of In The City and Camden Crawl, Cardiff has unveiled its very own multi-venue city-centre festival, Swn. Conceived late one night in a flash of inspiration from Radio 1 new music champion Huw Stephens, Swn has assembled over 120 bands to play in the Welsh capital across three days of cutting-edge music, art and cinema.

Among the highlights to watch out for are Beirut, Youthmovies, Slow Club, Two Gallants and the impeccably-named Cheeky Cheeky and the Nosebleeds, as well as a triple-bill of films scored by St Etienne and events organised by the likes of Domino Records, Kruger Magazine, Heavenly and Drowned in Sound. Wristbands for the festival are on sale now from www.swnfest.com.

Tickets are also on sale for the Portishead-curated All Tomorrow's Parties, held in Butlins in Minehead on the 7th, 8th and 9th of December. The trip-hop veterans continue their live comeback after seven years in the wilderness with a headline set alongside Aphex Twin, Seasick Steve and GZA from The Wu-Tang Clan. Look out as well for Chromehoof, who set pulses racing in music-industry-land with some memorable festival slots this summer.

News on the afore-mentioned Drowned in Sound. The influential indie website is perhaps not so indie anymore with the news that they've inked a deal with BSkyB to replicate their site-model across a number of new projects. The deal will allow the company to use its user-interaction formula and intelligent creative editorial to produce new sites, based on the Drowned in Sound model but aimed at broader audiences.

As well as a bit of a shiny, happy facelift, the site has incorporated a new user-determined article-rating system, designed to allow the DiS users to further interact with and filter their favourite bits of the site's editorial content. It all sounds exciting, but only time will tell if the site can retain the credibility and integrity it has built up over the last few years with such a global player on board. Drowned in Sound Records, responsible for launching the careers of the Kaiser Chiefs among many others, has not been included in the deal and will remain independent.

Finally, the Libertines have released a 'best of' compilation just in time for the pre-Christmas album buying frenzy, so if you missed out on the boys from Albion the first time around, here is an opportunity to find out why the papers started talking about Pete Doherty in the first place. Time for Heroes: The Best of the Libertines came out last Monday, and is made up of tracks from their debut Up the Bracket and its eponymous follow up, as well as a couple of unreleased rarities.

Some might say that two albums worth of tracks hardly warrants the release of a best of, but hey, if they say that they clearly don't work in marketing...

Rumours of a Libertines reunion continue to surface, with recent quotes attributed to Carl Barat stating that he has an "intermittent contract" with Doherty, and that the Libertines are simply "on ice". The release of this best of will do little to extinguish the flames of gossip, so expect another six months worth of tabloid tales of Doherty-related debauchery. I can hardly wait!

That's all I've got for you this time. Check out the related links over here for all the videos and downloads featured in the show.