Arcade Fire's "The Suburbs" in stores now!

The day is finally here! Arcade Fire's new album The Suburbs is available everywhere!

The band is currently on tour and will be streaming their August 5 Madison Square Garden performance live on YouTube. Featuring surprise musical guests and directed by Terry Gilliam (Brazil, 12 Monkeys), the performance will be live-streamed from the world's most famous arena at Arcade Fire's newly launched YouTube channel beginning at 10 p.m. EDT. Arcade Fire has asked fans to submit photos of their own suburbs for possible use on stage, and to send questions to the band through Twitter which will be answered before the show starts!

Planning to host your own viewing party for the Madison Square Garden stream? Send us your best party pics for a chance to win a Merge prize pack!

Arcade Fire will also appear live on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on August 12!

In addition to your favorite local independent record store and digital outlet, The Suburbs is available on CD, double-LP (with MP3 download card), and digital download in the Merge store.

Versus' "On the Ones and Threes" out now!

The long-awaited new Versus album, On the Ones and Threes, is now available in stores on CD and deluxe-edition double-LP in the Merge store. The vinyl format features an alternate sequence and two additional tracks from the album's recording sessions.

Order your copy and stream On the Ones and Threes in its entirety now in the Merge store, and check out how cool the double-LP looks on the Merge blog.

Versus has added a Brooklyn CD-release show on August 12 at Rock Shop to their recently announced new tour dates with Polvo and Superchunk.

"On the Ones and Threes offers a perfect example of someone's second or third act being both an achievement worth recognition and a catalyst for a reevaluation of its creators' body of work." ~Under the Radar

Versus on tour:
Aug 12 Brooklyn, NY - Rock Shop CD release show w/ True Love Always
Aug 13 Toronto, ON - Lee's Palace w/ Polvo
Aug 14 Montreal, QC - Cabaret Juste Pour Rire w/ Polvo
Sep 21 Boston, MA - Royale w/ Superchunk
Sep 22 Philadelphia, PA - Trocadero Theatre w/ Superchunk & Jenny and Johnny

Spoon on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon tonight!

Spoon is the musical guest tonight on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon! Check your local listings for channel and airtime information and set those DVRs.

Spoon is currently joining Arcade Fire for a few dates and will continue to tour through the rest of the summer and fall in support of their latest release, Transference. Los Angeles fans, you will finally get to see Spoon on September 30 at the Palladium! Tickets on sale now!

Visit spoontheband.com and follow the band on Twitter, too!

Spoon on tour:
Aug 4 New York, NY - Madison Square Garden w/ Arcade Fire
Aug 5 New York, NY - Madison Square Garden w/ Arcade Fire
Aug 6 Columbia, MD - Merriweather Post Pavilion w/ Arcade Fire
Aug 7 Chicago, IL - Lollapalooza
Aug 9 Columbus, OH - LC Pavilion Outdoor Amphitheatre
Aug 10 Covington, KY - Madison Theatre
Aug 11 Atlanta, GA - Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre w/ Arcade Fire
Sep 11 Harrisburg, PA - The Forum
Sep 12 Clark, NJ - Union County Music Festival
Sep 30 Los Angeles, CA - The Palladium w/ Cold Cave
Oct 1 San Diego, CA - SOMA
Oct 2 Las Vegas, NV - Matador's 21
Oct 4 Tucson, AZ - Rialto Theatre w/ Dale Watson
Oct 5 Albuquerque, NM - Sunshine Theatre w/ Dale Watson
Oct 6 El Paso, TX - Club 101 w/ Dale Watson
Oct 8 ACL Festival
Nov 10 Oslo, Norway - Rockefeller
Nov 11 Gothenburg, Sweden - Tradgarn
Nov 12 Copenhagen, Denmark - Vega
Nov 13 Wangels, Germany - Rolling Stone Weekender
Nov 15 Paris, France - Elysée Montmartre
Nov 16 London, UK - Shepherd's Bush Empire
Nov 17 Leeds, UK - Cockpit
Nov 18 Dublin, Ireland - Academy
Nov 20 The Hague, Holland - Crossing Border Festival
Nov 21 Antwerp, Belgium - Crossing Border Festival

Fucked Up announces "Year of the Ox" 12-inch for September release

Just in time for the end of 2010, Merge Records will release Fucked Up's Year of the Ox on limited-edition 12-inch and digital download on September 28.

Recorded over six months by Jon Drew at Giant Studios in Toronto, Year of the Ox is the band's fourth record in a continuing 12-year cycle and adds to its evolving retinue of guest musicians. The patient and building Year of the Ox features Nika Roza Danilova of Zola Jesus for a guest vocal passage and Toronto string quartet New Strings Old Puppets. The B-side "Solomon's Song," a gothic vampire love tribute to Twilight, features a five-minute saxophone solo from Aerin Fogel of the Bitters and heavy synthing from Trust.

Stream and pre-order Year of the Ox on limited-edition LP now in the Merge store.

Fucked Up will spend the rest of the year recording, touring and "resting" and will join the party in Vegas at the Matador "Lost Weekend" October 1-3.

Superchunk covers The Cure, announces "Majesty Shredding" release show

Superchunk visited the now-famous round room at The Onion A.V. Club headquarters in Chicago to deliver their take on The Cure's "In Between Days." The A.V. Club crew declares this cover "awesome" and we agree! Watch the video at A.V. Undercover.

Superchunk will celebrate the release of their new album Majesty Shredding with a concert on Thursday, September 16, at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.

The Superchunk performance, a complement to the Nasher Museum's exhibition The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl, will take place after a 7 p.m. talk by New York-based visual artist Xaviera Simmons, whose work is part of the exhibition. The Record explores the culture of vinyl records through 50 years of contemporary art and features work by 41 artists from around the world who use vinyl records as their subject or medium.

Superchunk frontman Mac McCaughan wrote an essay for The Record's catalogue and co-wrote a song with Harrison Haynes of Les Savy Fav for a 12-inch record project by Xaviera Simmons for the exhibition. Visit the Nasher website for more information about The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl.

The concert will begin at 8:30 p.m. and there is no opening band. Tickets are $12 for adults, $6 for Nasher Museum members, and $5 for Duke students with I.D. Tickets can be purchased at the Duke University Box Office (104 Bryan University Center, Durham, NC) and at www.tickets.duke.edu beginning today.

Superchunk's new album Majesty Shredding is available for pre-order on CD and LP now in the Merge store, and you can download the first single "Digging for Something" as a free preview! Also, tickets are on sale now for Superchunk's fall tour dates!

Caribou reveals "Sun" video

Watch the new video for "Sun" from the latest Caribou album Swim.

Pitchfork TV described the video in their premiere: "In the video, directed by Simon Owens, old and young women dance and gyrate, lip-synching to bandleader Dan Snaith's repetition of the song's title as if they're possessed by some spiritual force. It's just plain creepy (in a good way)."

The full Caribou band has announced a few tour dates this fall, but we suspect there are loads more to come! Order Swim on CD, double-LP and digital download now in the Merge store.

Caribou on tour:
Sep 15 Ottawa, ON - Babylon
Sep 18 London, ON - LOLA Festival
Sep 24 Cincinnati, OH - Midpoint Music Festival
Sep 25 Champaign-Urbana, IL - Pygmalion Festival
Oct 4 Seattle, WA - Showbox at the Market

Tracey Thorn gets remixed on new "Opposites" EP

On August 31, Tracey Thorn will release Opposites, a special digital-only EP of experimental remixes of tracks from her acclaimed new album Love and Its Opposite. If the album, produced by Ewan Pearson, was heralded for its unadorned and direct honesty, the remixes are deliberately oblique reinterpretations that throw a new sidelight on three of the album's key tracks.

"If the remixes for the last single 'Why Does the Wind?' were aimed at the dancefloor, these are perhaps aimed more at the head," says Tracey. "People often only remember the dance remixes I have been involved with and forget the great futuristic re-works of my voice over the years by people like Photek, Omni Trio and Howie B. If my versions of my songs are often plain and direct, these mixes add question marks and blind alleys, and I like that. It adds a different colour and makes them closer to my work with Massive Attack perhaps."

For the EP, the album's closing track "Swimming" (featuring Nashville's Cortney Tidwell) is remixed into a psychedelic West Coast journey by Visionquest. Fronted by Detroit's Seth Troxler, Visionquest is Seth plus American sparring partners Ryan Crosson and Lee Curtiss, who all ran the influential Tesh Club together before Seth moved to Berlin to become resident DJ at the city's pivotal Club der Visionare and Weekend Clubs in 2008. The move has made Seth one of Europe's most in-demand DJs of late. Cortney and Tracey's backing vocals are looped into a swirling head-swim before the track locks onto a killer Fleetwood Mac groove for a deep Balearic summer ride.

Walls is Sam Willis (from influential electronic music blog, Allez-Allez) and Alessio Natalizia (Banjo or Freakout). Their recent debut album on German uber-label Kompakt has been one of the year's sleeper hits. Mixing the same influences that pepper the album, their rework of "Kentish Town" is a woozy blissed-out dream, part Krautrock, part Eno-esque ambience.

Kwesi Darko aka Blue Daisy runs Camden Town's Black Acre and has turned it into one of the labels to watch over the past few months. The imprint has delivered a string of inventive post-dubstep soundscapes for forward-looking dancefloors and afterhours parties alike. Drawing on dub, hip-hop and rich synthetic orchestration, Blue Daisy's take on "Late in the Afternoon" is blunted and cinematic, heavy on sub-bass and twinkling stressed-out FX.

Tracey Thorn's Opposites EP will be available beginning August 24 exclusively on Beatport and then on the usual digital outlets beginning August 31. Download a free MP3 of "Kentish Town (Walls Remix)" and feel free to share!

Track list:
1. Swimming (Visionquest Remix)
2. Swimming (Album Version)
3. Kentish Town (Walls Remix)
4. Kentish Town (Album Version)
5. Late in the Afternoon (Blue Daisy Remix)
6. Late in the Afternoon (Album Version)

Telekinesis shares photos from the studio & hits the road with new band

Spin.com caught up with Michael Benjamin Lerner at Jackpot Studio in Portland where he is holed up with Chris Walla recording the follow-up to 2009's Telekinesis! Michael shared photos and stories from the sessions for an as-yet-untitled new album due early next year.

The new incarnation of the Telekinesis band will be on tour beginning August 31 in St. Louis with Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and ending on October 19 in LA at the Music Box with Superchunk. Featuring Jason Narducy on bass (Robert Pollard, Verbow) and Cody Votolato on guitar (Jaguar Love, The Blood Brothers), the new line-up promises to bring all of the energy and fun you have come to expect from the Telekinesis live experience!

Keep up with Telekinesis on Twitter, and visit the Merge store for a copy of the limited-edition "Dirty Thing" 7-inch while supplies last!

Telekinesis on tour:
* = w/ Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
% = w/ Superchunk
# = w/ Teenage Fanclub

Aug 31 St. Louis, MO - Firebird *
Sep 1 Urbana, IL - Canopy Club *
Sep 2 Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall *
Sep 3 Detroit, MI - Magic Stick *
Sep 4 Toronto, ON - El Mocambo *
Sep 6 Montreal, QC - Casa Del Popolo *
Sep 7 Cambridge, MA - TT the Bear's *
Sep 8 New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom *
Sep 10 Washington, DC - Black Cat *
Sep 11 Philadelphia, PA - The Barbary *
Sep 12 Cleveland, OH - Grog Shop *
Sep 13 Columbus, OH - The Basement *
Oct 13 Vancouver, BC - Venue %
Oct 14 Seattle, WA - The Showbox % #
Oct 15 Portland, OR - Wonder Ballroom % #
Oct 19 Los Angeles, CA - The Music Box %

The Love Language adds dates to September tour

The Love Language's Merge debut Libraries was met with lots of excitement with sold-out shows in DC, NYC and their hometown show at the Cat's Cradle. Stuart, Missy, BJ, Jordan, and Justin will play the inaugural Hopscotch Festival in Raleigh, NC, on September 11 in addition to new headlining dates and shows with Local Natives this fall.

Watch Stuart tell all to Dan Harris on ABC Amplified and download The Love Language's live performance on North Carolina Public Radio's The State of Things. Libraries is available on CD, LP and digital download in the Merge store.

The Love Language on tour:
* = w/ Local Natives

Aug 21 Raleigh, NC - Schoolkids Records - Free in-store performance @ 4PM
Aug 22 Chapel Hill, NC - Flyleaf Books - Free in-store performance @ 2PM
Aug 28 Wilmington, NC - Gravity Records - Free in-store performance @ 3PM
Aug 28 Wilmington, NC - Soapbox
Sep 3 Atlanta, GA - The Earl
Sep 4 Charlotte, NC - Visulite Theatre
Sep 11 Raleigh, NC - Hopscotch Festival w/ Public Enemy & No Age
Sep 12 Nashville, TN - Exit/In
Sep 13 Baton Rouge, LA - Spanish Moon
Sep 14 Austin, TX - Emo's Inside
Sep 17 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre (SOLD OUT) *
Sep 18 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre
Sep 19 Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up Tavern *
Sep 20 Santa Barbara, CA - SOhO Restaurant and Music Club *
Sep 22 San Francisco, CA - Fillmore *
Sep 24 Seattle, WA - Showbox at the Market *
Sep 25 Portland, OR - Wonder Ballroom *
Sep 28 Boulder, CO - Fox Theatre *
Sep 30 Omaha, NE - The Waiting Room *
Oct 1 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue *
Oct 3 Columbia, MO - The Blue Note *
Oct 5 Oklahoma City, OK - Academy of Contemporary Music *
Oct 6 Dallas, TX - House of Blues *
Oct 7 Houston, TX - House of Blues *

Wye Oak tours with Lou Barlow + the missingmen, the Mountain Goats & David Bazan

Wye Oak is hitting the road beginning August 17 with Lou Barlow + the missingmen and has just added new dates with the Mountain Goats and David Bazan. Don't miss the chance to see Wye Oak and hear new songs before they return to the studio to record the follow-up to The Knot!

Their new EP, My Neighbor / My Creator, is available via digital download in the Merge store and at your favorite digital outlets and local record stores.

Wye Oak on tour:
* = w/ Lou Barlow + the missingmen
% = w/ the Mountain Goats
# = w/ David Bazan

Aug 17 Milford, CT - Daniel Street Club *
Aug 18 Washington, DC - Rock N Roll Hotel *
Aug 19 Carrboro, NC - Cat's Cradle *
Aug 20 Asheville, NC - Grey Eagle *
Aug 21 Nashville, TN - The Basement *
Aug 23 Madison, WI - The Frequency *
Aug 25 Minneapolis, MN - 400 Bar *
Aug 26 Chicago, IL - Schubas Tavern *
Aug 27 Cleveland, OH - Grog Shop *
Aug 28 Toronto, ON - Horseshoe Tavern *
Aug 29 Montreal, QC - Il Motore *
Aug 31 Northampton, MA - Iron Horse *
Sep 1 New York, NY - Mercury Lounge *
Sep 2 Cambridge, MA - Middle East *
Sep 3 Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda's *
Sep 4 Hoboken, NJ - Maxwell's *
Oct 4 Lawrence, KS - Bottleneck %
Oct 5 Columbia, MO - The Blue Note %
Oct 11 Lubbock, TX - The Foundation #
Oct 12 Albuquerque, NM - Launchpad #
Oct 13 Tucson, AZ - Club Congress #
Oct 15 Los Angeles, CA - Spaceland #
Oct 16 San Diego, CA - The Casbah #
Oct 17 San Luis Obispo, CA - Downtown Brewing Co. #
Oct 18 San Francisco, CA - The Independent #

It's getting hot out there!

Your favorite Merge bands are hard at work keeping the clubs and arenas hot out there as summer turns into fall. Richard Buckner will be sharing music old and new on tour in September. Let's Wrestle and The Clientele will travel across the pond for shows. Tickets for Teenage Fanclub's much-anticipated visit to North America are already on sale, and don't miss Versus and Polvo who have shows both together and apart! As always, all Merge tour dates can be found at mergerecords.com/tour.