Moon Block Party has just announced the lineup for this year's Desert Daze Music & Arts Festival in Sunset Ranch (near Mecca, CA) on Saturday, April 20, 2013. Acclaimed “Touareg” band Tinariwen and former Amoeba Home Grown artists Warpaint headline the festival, with Chelsea Wolfe, Fool's Gold, Mini Mansions, Night Beats, The Entrance Band and many more performing.

Tickets are on sale now via Brown Paper Tickets and “the fair-trade ticketing company” will donate a portion of the proceeds from the festival to the charity of the ticket purchaser’s choice. You can buy general admission passes ($35 + $2.22 service fee) or there are three additional ticket options that include camping (tent, lakeside or RV) for a bit more. Buy tickets here.

Keep an eye on Moon Block Party's Facebook page for more updates and ticket giveaways in the coming weeks.

 

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Amoeba.com’s growing free downloads section had a ton of great stuff this year. Here are some highlights.

Sufjan Stevens – “Justice Delivers Its Death”

This delicate ballad comes from Sufjan Stevens’ latest Christmas opus, Silver & Gold, Songs for Christmas, though its delicate beauty would fit on any of Stevens’ early, more acoustic releases.

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Pissed Jeans – “Bathroom Laughter”

Pennsylvania punks Pissed Jeans’ latest album, Honeys, is due Feb. 12 on Sub Pop. The first taste from the album is a ferocious blast, with singer Matt Korvette scream-talking lyrics quickly as the band bashes out two-and-a-half minutes of hardcore bliss.

50. Purity Ring – Shrines

Purity Ring make Cocteau Twins­-style dream pop by way of Salem’s hard-hitting witchhouse on an album more notable for its smooth blending of related genres than for its actual songwriting, but they’ve got a sweet sound nonetheless.

49. Cold Showers – Love & Regret

Cold Showers’ short and sweet debut heralds the arrival of a great new L.A. band, beaming shoegaze guitars over darkwave synths and goth-style vocals. (Read my review of Cold Showers' show here.)

OMG you guys, it’s Halloween! Kind of. Halloween is next Wednesday — read all about the puppy antics Amoeba Hollywood has in store here — which means it’s kind of like it’s Halloween for the next six days. Besides your requisite scary movies, here are some recent creepy albums to get you through the next week, and a few upcoming ones to look out for.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! (CD or LP)

This one’s kind of obvious. This is a band that made an album ostensibly about the end of the world, and the post-rock outfit’s latest release starts with a 20-minute opus of crashing sound named after a war criminal. But Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! pairs its noisy parts with moments of unnerving beauty, as in the spectral “We Drift Like Worried Fire.”

Swans – The Seer (CD, Deluxe CD, LP or Download)

Chelsea Wolfe released my favorite album of late with Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs. True to its name, it’s a spare set of darkly beautiful tunes with little more than Wolfe’s voice, acoustic guitar and strings, offering a sound that’s at once hollow and spilling over with emotion. Wolfe spoke with me a bit about her latest album before her performance at Amoeba Hollywood Sunday Oct. 21 at 5 p.m.

PST: Why give the album a subtitle like “A Collection of Acoustic Songs”? Did you want to be honest about what to expect from the album, and did you worry that that would set up assumption about what the album would sound like?

Wolfe: I added that because the songs span a period of years; some were written five years ago, and some I wrote very recently for the album. I had planned on releasing a collection of recordings from the past, orphaned songs that I never released on an album, but I found myself writing new acoustic songs, so I decided to do new recordings of the older songs as well and approached them in a new way. I chose the songs I felt would live well together in this home of an album.

PST: I should say I think it’s your best album yet! Was part of the reason in stripping down the music to allow the quality of the songwriting and performances to come through clearly?

Wolfe: Thank you. I don't think about things like that, to be honest. I wanted to get back to my roots a little bit maybe. I love rock ’n’ roll, but I also have this folk side to me, to my music, and it was really a good time getting back into it. I look forward to touring with these songs, it will be a very different energy than how I've been playing the past couple of years.