I just started a new weekly feature over at spin.com called “Hopp on Pop.” Every Wednesday it will highlight a new band or artist to check out. This week’s pick: Japandroids. You can check out the feature here. I hope you enjoy it and discover some cool new music!

our friends at pickRset.com have posted the the entire album from hifi handgrenades on their site. to get it, you need to sign up for a pickRset account (this is free), login and go to “your home”. from there you can download the entire album for free. this album may very well carry a parental advisory for explicit lyrics, so if it does, be mindful of tender ears.

also, the hifi hand grenades are opening for the Foo Fighters in japan starting april 13.2008. they’re also on the warped tour august 5.2008 in saskatoon, canada. ahh, good old saskatoon.

well here it is!! the much-anticipated and critically-acclaimed debut release extravaganza from our good friend chris holmes’s artistic nom de plume They Only Want has been released! the album is titled “sub-rosa,” which means “in secret.” oooooo….mysterious… guitars, keyboards, computers, samples, and chris singing his heart out. click here to check it out.

our friends in socratic have released a demo of their song “magazine” on fuse’s website that we recorded for their new album. this isn’t the final mix, but it’s the recording from our studio, so i guess technically in the music industry you would call this a “reference mix.” click here to download the song.

blink-182’s tour manager and great friend gus brandt now manages a band called HiFi Handgrenades. for those of you who subscribe to the himynameismark podcast, there is a free download of their cautionary tale of a song called Sunset to Sunrise.