Girls, Four Tet, Dirty Projectors + more in news today

I go to bed and wake to find that Girls have broken up. The lesson? Never sleep again, I guess. I should clarify that the San Francisco-based band has not officially ‘broken up,’ but with the departure of frontman/songwriter/vocalist Christopher Owens, that’s essentially all they can do. This bums me out for a couple of reasons. I didn’t get into Girls until last September, at which point I realized Album and the then-recent Father, Son and Holy Ghost were among the catchiest, most replayable and most relatable indie rock albums I’d heard in a long time. The nearly LP-length Broken Dreams Club EP soon proved to be just as essential. Owens is a fantastic songwriter backed by equally talented collaborators, and it’s a real shame that they won’t be working together anymore. Double sadness for me, since Girls were an apparently awe-inspiring live band who I was never able to see. Their last Boston gig was the same night as a Stephen Malkmus show at the Royale, which my never-ending Pavement fandom forced me to attend instead. Sadness all around. Click on for a rundown of the day’s much less depressing music news.

First off, electronic musician/producer Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet, announced a new album this morning. It will collect a series of vinyl-only singles released over the past year into album format, and it’s called Pink. The album will be available digitally August 20th.

Brooklyn-based indie/experimental rock band Dirty Projectors are set to release their new record Swing Lo Magellan a week from tomorrow, but thanks to the New York Times you can stream it right now. It’s not quite Bitte Orca part 2, so don’t go in expecting that. It’s unmistakably a Dirty Projectors record though, and a worthy followup to one of 2009’s best albums. Surely worth your time.

Once you’ve listened to Swing Lo Magellan eight or nine times, why not check out Lil B the Based God’s new mixtape for a change of pace? It’s a concise 855 tracks/4.9 GB of based freestyles. Just when you think Lil B has pulled his silliest stunt yet (a 2.5 hour instrumental album of ambient soundscapes anyone?), he one-ups himself with something that’s somehow even more insane. Stay based, you hyper-positive enigma.