When The Swell Season played LA’s Wiltern Theater Wednesday night, Apatow acolyte and our favorite lug Jason Segel, took over the piano bench for a song he penned himself. After watching a few dozen times, we’d be down for a “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” sequel right now—much more so than that Russell Brand-Jonah Hill spin-off currently in production anyway. Way better vampire jams than those flying into theaters today, no doubt.

Sure, it’s great to get the Jay-Z stamp of approval, but Jay lives in a penthouse in Tribeca or something (in our mind dude has like 18 houses- recession be damned). The man isn’t exactly down with the underground anymore.

So it’s nice to see some more, shall we say “indie” rappers also show their love for the G.B. This week Kidz In The Hall leaked the first song from their upcoming Professional Leisure Tour mixtape and to our surprise it was not a bass-heavy trunk jam but a bragacodio-filled re-interpretation of Grizzly Bear’s “Two Weeks.”Check it out here.

This should come as a particular comfort to Grizzly Bear fans, who are still mourning the recent loss of Ed Droste’s Twitter account. The fine folks at Hipster Runoff gave a pretty stellar eulogy of Droste’s departure from the Twitterverse…

Edward Droste (1982–2009)
a Eulogy
Edward Droste, creator and CEO of the popular indie band Grizzly Bear, committed suicide in November of 2009. He is survived by Victoria Legrand, lead singer of the band Beach House. She has vowed to avenge his death by claiming Pitchfork’s album of the year in 2010. Ed has three surviving bandmates, Daniel Rossen, Chris Bear, and Chris Taylor. They have decided to dissolve Grizzly Bear, and continue performing as ‘The Department of Eagles.’ In 10–20 years, they will consider Edward was always known to throw down a solid meme, and was one of the initial supporters of the chillwave movement. In 2 short months, Edward would have found out that Grizzly Bear’s 2009 album Veckatimest was controversially voted the #1 album of the year after a voter fraud scandal in the Pitchfork offices.

(Via: Nah Right & Daily Swarm/Hipster Runoff)

Merge just put out some videos from a Neutral Milk Hotel show at the old Knitting Factory in 1998 in conjunction with the reissue of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea on 180-gram vinyl. They’re good quality and certainly showcase the sound and song of the band. They also weirdly showcase Jeff as a budding style icon, as one Stereogum commenter astutely points out, rocking what can only be considered a precursor to the Anton Chigurh No Country For Old Men haircut. But that’s another story. The only sadness comes in here when we, as (fairly) young music writers, also see this as a tribute to one of the most interesting bands of our time in a way that we will probably never get a chance to see. Oh well, at least we live in the age of YouTube! Check out “Two Headed Boy” and “April 8″ below.

(Via: Stereogum via Merge)

We’re very jazzed to inform you that we linked up with Dangerbird Records co-founder Jeff Castelaz recently, just as he was riding his bike across the country to raise funds for the Pablove Foundation. Along the way, Jeff recorded some video blog entries for us, talking a bit about what he was up to and what he was jamming. Check out the first installment above and if you’re in LA, maybe try and catch a celebratory show at the Avalon tomorrow night as Jeff pedals back into LA.

Band of Horses are headlining, Shirley Manson’s going to be there… it should be a great time. You can snag tickets here.

Photo: Autumn DeWilde

Have you seen Spoon live? They’re crisp, like say, a delicious pastry. They are absolutely not one of those bands who anyone could ever accuse of “studio magic” because their sets beautifully recreate these little jams they have come close to perfecting over the last decade of making indie rock. Well, they’re doing it all over again with Transference this January 26, and surrounding that release date with some live shows. One date is even with Jay Reatard, which is sort of like an experiment on what happens when organized sound meets sonic chaos. So we think everyone wins.

12.03 Kansas City, MO  @ Midland Theatre
12.04 Boston, MA @ Orpheum Theatre #
12.11 Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom *
12.12 La Jolla, CA @ RIMAC Arena
12.31 Milwaukee, WI @ Riverside Theatre !

02.14 Glasgow, Scotland @ King Tut’s
02.15 Manchester, England @ Academy 3
02.16 London, England @ Electric Ballroom
02.18 Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso
02.19 Cologne, Germany @ Luxor
02.20 Berlin, Germany @ Franz Club

# with Phoenix, Passion Pit
* with Black Joe Lewis
! with Jay Reatard

(Via: P4K)