If you are following us on Facebook or Twitter then you will probably have heard us talking about a new ‘mysterious’ feature called “Top 5 @ 5“, which will hopefully become a regular occurrence here.

Part of the fun of running this blog is that we get to explore and experience new music right alongside you guys, so what better way to broaden our horizons than to invite some of our best-loved artists to reveal their current top 5 tracks for us?

To kick us off we asked our new favourite band Lighthouses to give us their rundown, and you can check out their sunshine inspired selection just below the cut!

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs – “Tapes & Money”

TEED‘s album has basically been the album we’ve collectively been most desperate to get ahold of for years. We’ve all been following him quite a long time (even back to Keytar and Boxhead’d Sidekick days) and we’ve yet to hear anything he’s put out that we don’t like.

The singles released from this album (“Garden“, “Household Goods“, “Trouble“, “Need Me On My Own” and “Tapes & Money“) have all been universally awesome which we’ve pretty much told him the few times we’ve met him, it’s a good job he’s a really nice guy or we’d probably have been quite a nuisance.

 

Vanguard – “Morning Light”

We first heard about Vanguard via their Louis La Roche remix, and it’s hard to believe they’re from Cardiff! Their tracks are way too bright and summery to make that concept even feasible.

Big synths, love it.

 

Martin Solveig – “The Night Out”

We love how upbeat and summery this song is, as it makes us start looking towards festival season which we’re so excited about this time around. We’re all big fans of Phoenix, and this sounds suspiciously like it’s sampled from 1901, but I’m glad it’s sampled rather than a straight remix as the new vocal is really catchy (lots of places were saying it’s Thomas Mars of Phoenix but apparently it’s not).

“The Night Out“ sounds a bit like Phoenix crossed with Digitalism which can only be a good thing, especially as the first Digitalism record was one of our early influences to start doing what we do now.

 

Gotye – “Somebody That I Used To Know” (Miami Nights ’84 Remix)

Loved the lyrics to “Somebody That I Used To Know“, it was pretty fresh thematically which is weird as it’s describing a situation I’m sure alot of people have been through, so it definitely resonated on that level. We weren’t that into the arrangement of the song itself though, so when we heard this remix by Miami Nights ’84 we became absolutely obsessed.

It’s really like the kind of thing we do with our remixes; we’re always big on preserving vocals when we do remixes (if we really like the vocal), focusing on building around the emotion in the vocals which this does perfectly. We were thinking about doing a remix of this song but doesn’t seem worth it now as I don’t think we can top this!

Oliver – “Dirty Talk”

We’ve been following Oliver since we heard their remix of Chromeo‘s “Hot Mess“, and we honestly don’t think they’ve ever produced a bad remix. We were really looking forward to original material from them and they didn’t disappoint.

Amazing vocal hook, bass and synth stabs, everything we’re into!

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Thanks go out to Lighthouses who were kind enough to submit this list of fantastic music for us to listen to.

Definitely remember to check out their latest demo Aerials, which is the most recent reminder as to why we love them so much.