Basia Bulat

The Week in Music: Hot Chip Antes Up; Basia Bulat and Jason Collett's Feist Connection; Samamidon and Yip-Yip

One gets the feeling that this is Hot Chip's year, much as it was LCD Soundsystem's in 2007. The cheeky Brits—but with heart! and brains!—know how to engineer a beat and write a hook, and their wave is cresting at the precise moment when smart dancehall and techno appear to be at their commercial peaks (think Justice, M.I.A., Chromeo, and the already mentioned LCD Soundsystem). Of course, to their credit, they've been doing their thing long before some of the aforementioned, and Made in the Dark (reviewed this morning by J. Gabriel Boylan) should cement their high standing. So, what if their video for "Ready for the Floor" relies a little too heavily on '80's pastiche—did they grab those girls straight out of a Don Henley video?—it's sure to do the trick.

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