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Sites of the Week: Very Mary Kate, Yours Truly, Morph Thing

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Very Mary Kate
The unofficial biographical web TV series featuring a hilarious Mary Kate Olsen.
http://verymarykate.com

Yours Truly
Beautiful live films of musicians performing for the camera. Includes great videos of Villagers, Deerhunter, Drake, Toro Y Moi, Sharon Jones and loads more. All of the clips are worth your time.
http://yourstru.ly

Morph Thing
See what two celebrities would look like if you really merged them or see what your child may look like.
http://www.morphthing.com

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Band of Blogs: Nicki Minaj, Visionair, Twin Shadow, Koripop

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Nicki Minaj
Everyone is tipping Minaj as the next big U.S. rap superstar. Kanye gave her a guest spot, Will.i.am has recorded with her and the blogosphere is already in love. A performer somewhere between Lil Kim and Grace Jones, she’s certainly intriguing. Next month, we’ll see if the hype and personas will translate to success when her debut album Pink Friday comes out.
Listen at The Hype Machine

Visionair
During downtime in their band The Redneck Manifesto, Richie Egan (aka Jape) and Niall Byrne got together to construct some synth-based jams which hark back to the first time synthesizers were explored for sound. A free four track EP called Autumn is available.
Listen and download the EP

Twin Shadow
Time Out NY has already named George Lewis Jr. amongst the most stylish New Yorkers but it’s Lewis Jr’s retro disco and soul inspired electronic ballads that have caught the headlines the most. You can listen to his album at http://twinshadow.net.

Koripop
Canadian singer-songwriter Kori is little known over here but her cabaret pop songs are slowly finding fans on this side of the Atlantic. Having drawn comparisons to Julie Feeney and Emiliana Torrini, her album From The Outskirts is streaming at Bandcamp.
http://koripop.bandcamp.com

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Lilou the cat takes the DART

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A cat called Lilou took a day trip on the DART into town. Irish Rail tweeted a pic with some information and the cat was reunited with its owner Eric Dieci, a French chef living in Dublin. The story was then re-enacted for the purposes of a short film.

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How to add all friends to an event in Facebook

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If you’ve ever had to send out an event invite on Facebook you may have noticed that there is no easy way to invite ALL your friends.

But with this bit of code, you can do just that.
javascript:elms=document.getElementById('friends').getElementsByTagName('li');for(var fid in elms){if(typeof elms[fid] === 'object'){fs.click(elms[fid]);}}

1. Go to the event page.
2. Press ‘Select guests to invite’
3. When the invite friends popup appears, paste the above code into your browser URL.
4. Voila! All friends are now invited!
5. Press send.

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Artists who branch out: The xx, Flaming Lips & Efterklang

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The xx commissioned a music video and sculpture piece by Saam Farahmand which was exhibited in London last year. The installation allowed visitors to watch three audio-visual columns, one for each member of the band, playing through the songs from their Mercury Prize winning album xx.

That sounds great but for those outside London, there is now an iPhone app that goes someway to recreating the idea. Featuring the first three songs of the album, the idea is you install it on you and your friends’ iPhones, press connect and the three iPhones will play the role of the columns, playing back three each part of the song simultaneously. You can download it at http://bit.ly/thexxapp.

Another artist who is doing things in different mediums is The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne who far from immersing himself in technology, has extracted some of his own blood for use in a screen print of an upcoming gig poster. “We thought it would be silly to use some chicken blood…they need to sacrifice their vital fluids any more than I need to,” Coyne reasoned. The entire process of the making of the poster can be watched below but is probably not for the squeamish. Let’s hope the proceeds from the sale are going to a blood donor clinic.

In the land of the Danes, earthy chamber-popsters Efterklang have started an initiative to raise awareness of the need for music in public schools. Efterkids began when the band did a virtual performance with students from New York’s Special Music School in which the students performed in front of a 20-foot high projection of the band.
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