Listen To This: "Cats & Dogs" - Best Coast

I know, I know record labels are (mostly) dead [waves "Hi" at Bill], but I do appreciate that Amazon Music is using some of its bazillions of dollars not just to give away free bananas but fund the creation of some kids music that probably wouldn't happen otherwise.

The latest such album is the forthcoming album Best Kids from crunchy garage pop-rockers Best Coast. The duo of singer/guitarist Bethany Consentino and multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno, took 11 songs, a mixture of classics like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Rainbow Connection" and originals, and gave them their own Best Coast spin. (There is, unsurprisingly, no banjo on their revved-up version of "Rainbow Connection.")

You can hear the whole thing exclusively on Amazon Music on June 22 (preorder it here), but you can listen to one of the originals, the friendship-celebrating "Cats & Dogs, RIGHT. HERE. NOW.

Video: "Dream Too Much" - Amy Lee

Clearly Amazon Music is moving full steam ahead in developing a label of exclusive releases. They started out slowly, but now in addition to The Pop Ups and Recess Monkey, they've got Lisa Loeb, The L (featuring Bob Schneider), and Amy Lee. The singer (probably best known as the leader of Evanescence) is a parent of a toddler, and in a couple weeks she's releasing Dream Too Much, her first album for kids.

The title track is whimsical and, befitting a song about dreams' often off-kilter narratives, filled with surreal lyrical imagery. That surreal imagery is made real in her new video for the album's title track. I like the song, but the paper-based images are even better.

Amy Lee - "Dream Too Much" [YouTube]

Video: "Time to Make the Donuts" - Recess Monkey

For adults of a certain age, the phrase "time to make the donuts" will probably ring a certain set of bells. Our kids, though? That phrase will be linked with Recess Monkey.

That's because for their brand new album Novelties! (their thirteenth, and first for Amazon Music), they've got the catchy track "Time to Make the Donuts," and a video whose choreographed swooping and strutting seems like something out of an early OK Go video. Jack sings while Drew and Korum step in and out of the frame with all manner of donut-related equipment in Seattle's own Top Pot Doughnuts' kitchen. The video, filmed by Aaron Horton, is thoroughly charming.

By the way, for the next week (through June 23rd), you can grab a copy of "Time to Make the Donuts" for free right here.

Recess Monkey - "Time to Make the Donuts" [YouTube]

Video: "We Live in an Orchestra" - The Pop Ups

The partnership between the Pop Ups and Amazon is paying dividends, if only because Amazon let Jacob and Jason create a half-hour special exclusively for Amazon Prime members, and then let them share it with the world. "We Live in an Orchestra" from their stellar Great Pretenders Club album is like the funkiest ASMR song for kids ever, filled with taps and scratches and balloon pops. Now they've done a video which, in its multiple iterations of Jacobs running around Jason's laboratory, is like a cartoon come to life. So good! (If I were picking from the spinning wheel, count me as "Happy :-)" and "Super."

The Pop Ups - "We Live in an Orchestra" [YouTube]

Video: "Bird and Rhino" - The Pop Ups

Let's wrap up this (unofficial) Day of The Pop Ups -- sort of a pop-up Pop Ups site -- here at Zooglobble on a visual note. We've had a review of Great Pretenders Club, the first kids music album to be released exclusively on Amazon Music. And we've interviewed Jason Rabinowitz how the album came about and what we can expect in the future.

One of those things we can expect is a video for each of the album's 11 tracks. The first video, for the track "Bird and Rhino," is already here. It's purposefully slightly lo-fi animation nicely captures the track's occasional zaniness. If you're going to stomp that fire out with a funnily voiced Rhino, that's not exactly something that cries out for verisimilitude.

You can watch the video directly on Amazon's website, but seeing as Amazon Music also has its own (embeddable) YouTube channel, let's go with that.

The Pop Ups - "Bird and Rhino" [YouTube]

Itty-Bitty Interview: Jason Rabinowitz (The Pop Ups)

Usually I like my interviews a little bit longer, but the speed of the release of Great Pretenders Club, the excellent album from Brooklyn duo The Pop Ups demanded something shorter. Also, given its relative secrecy -- announced and released within a week -- I couldn't do something more extensive. (I tip my hat to the band, though, for keeping such a tremendous work under wraps.)

But Jason Rabinowitz, one half of the duo, did answer a few questions last week about the process of creating the album, his influences, and what we can expect in the weeks and months to come.

Zooglobble: “Great Pretenders Club” is the first kindie “instant album” (meaning, released almost as soon as it’s announced) -- how long have you been working on it?

Jason Rabinowitz: From the moment we started writing until the moment it came back from mastering was about 3 months. It was hard to keep it under our hats that whole time.

How did the association with Amazon Music come about?

Our manager (at mTheory LLC) was at Amazon for a meeting (not about us) and threw our hat in the ring. (I'm going to try and mention the word "hat" in every answer here.)

The album has a definite ‘80s vibe, even more so than your other albums -- do you have any favorite albums from that era?

Purple Rain, Thriller, Graceland: the big three.

Remain In Light. Doolittle. She's So Unusual. Voices. Freedom Of Choice. Tom Tom Club. Even Worse. Spike.

Anything by Men Without Hats.

Also a lot of 70's albums. Too long to list but some highlights: Tusk. #1 Album. Fulfillingness First Finale.

More more more!!!

What else will you be doing with the album and the music from it?

We're making a video for all 11 songs on the album that will stream as a Pop Ups block on Amazon Prime! Very excited about that! So... Hats off to that idea!