Explode Into Colors is a band out of Olympia Portland featuring “three weird aunts”– one of which is Lisa of longtime Catbird favorite Kickball (the other members are Claudia Meza of Japanther and Heather Treadway of Tender Forever). Kill Rock Stars will be putting out a single later this summer, and they’re going to be tearing it up at SXSW (so there’s another band to add to your list). Willamette Week says they conjure a “ghostly drone funk that seemed to come from far away, a subterranean punk struggle with a slow dance,” and that’s as apt a description as you’re likely to find. I’m loving “Eyes, Hands, Mouth,” and “Sharpen The Knife” is pretty good too…

…plus there a bunch more good ones streaming at their Myspace. I’m anxious to get my hands on a full-length from them, let’s hope they keep at it.

(But they’re not going to get that vaunted approval from the hipper-than-thou “online tastemakers” unless they change their name to “Explode Into Color GIRLS,” and start recording their songs through some broken-ass, staticky microphone into a shitty old boombox.)

Legendary kiwi rockers The Bats are to return this April with The Guilty Office, their first album of new material since 2005 (it’ll be their 8th LP overall). It’s coming out on Hidden Agenda and is available for pre-order now from Parasol.

The record will be preceded in April by the 7″ Don’t You Rise EP, which collects four tracks from 1998-2003 and will be released by the mighty Slumberland Records.

In other kiwi news, there’s a rumor making the rounds that 2009 will also bring a new record from The Clean (on Merge, of course).

The first time I checked out recent Rough Trade signing Micachu & the Shapes, I honestly didn’t know what to make of it. To paraphrase Frank, my first instinct was that ‘I never want to hear this again.’ Which was followed immediately by me hitting the repeat button.

So yeah, it took a bit for me to wrap my head around Mica Levi’s unusual musical aesthetic, but the more I listened to it, the more I started to be really excited by what I was hearing. This was some stuff quite literally unlike anything I’d ever heard before. As I say, the closest approximation I can come up with is “like Björk and Blueberry Boat and Bone Machine and Harry Partch, chopped, diced and liquified, then reprocessed, reprogrammed, and ultimately reconstructed, deep in the creative centers of an ADDled Millenial brain.”

Until a week ago, I’d only heard “Lips” and “Golden Phone.” Then I got my full copy of Jewellery, and heard 10 more Micachu songs. And my reaction was: “Wow.”

Jewellery is out 4/7 on Beggars/Rough Trade. We’ve got a full album stream of Jewellery over at MBV.

The March Mix has (finally) been posted– Enjoy.