Now, Now are a Minneapolis based trio composed of Cacie Dalager (Vocals, Guitar), Jess Abbott (Vocals, Guitar), and Brad Hale (Drums, Synth).

Threads, their second full-length release is a must-listen. Exploring the fragile nature of our existence, our perceived understanding of the world, and relationships shared with others physically and emotionally - Threads packages these rich concepts into catchy, addictive tunes.

Produced by Howard Redekopp (Tegan and Sara, An Horse, New Pornographers), Threads forms a sprawling sonic endeavor that showcases the band’s incredible growth as songwriters and musicians.

The album will be out on March 6th 2012 but we’re pre-streaming this hot new release just for Spotify fans. Check it out here!

Our friend @MonaFims has this #MusicMonday’s music recommendations.

This #MusicMonday kicks off with a new favorite indie-pop darling: Sheffield-based “Standard Fare”. I fell in love with their song “The Look of Lust” from their secound album “Out of Sight, Out of Town”

As usual, I try to add a few good singer/songwriters to the playlist every week. This week the chosen ones are: “Scott Matthews” with “Eyes Wider Than Before” from his first album “Passing Stranger” I´m still in love with his first single from the same album called “Elusive” Do you remember that song? Also,”Ben Howard” with “Old Pine” and “Damien Rice” with “Dogs”. All amazing songs and artists.

There is always a mix between genres and new findings. In the latest edition of by:larm in Oslo, last week, “Tomorrow We Move to Hawaii” made a great live impression and their song “Underworld” got stuck in my head. From Malmø, a new shiny Swedish favourite called “Turn Off Your Televition”. And last but not least: Astro. Their song “Ciervos” is strange and very catchy.

If you have song suggestion for next weeks playlist feel free to drop them in my Spotify Inbox!

Here you can find the playlist: http://spoti.fi/music-mondays - Subscribe and you will get a mix of twenty new feel-good tracks every Monday.

Enjoy!

Fun.’s new album Some Nights is available now on Fueled By Ramen.

Produced by Jeff Bhasker (Kanye West, Drake), this indie-pop treasure includes the breakout single ‘We Are Young’ featuring Janelle Monáe. Plus, if you love the music, get a behind-the-scenes look on the making of the album with this track commentary from the trio.

Look for the band on their headline tour this spring including stops at SXSW and the Sasquatch Music Festival.

Here at Spotify, we’re always looking for ways to improve the music you hear. That’s why we’re so pleased to announce the release of gapless playback and crossfade – coming soon with your next Spotify upgrade.

Gapless playback lets the tracks flow seamlessly, one to the next, without any silence between. Perfect for classical music, live recordings and concept albums.

It’s such a useful feature that the new release of Spotify will have gapless ‘On’ by default. If you want to turn it off, it’ll be right there in your Spotify Preferences.

Get the party started with crossfade

Another much-requested feature is crossfade – fading out one song as you bring another in. Now you can DJ to your heart’s content!

We’ve left this one for you to flip the switch yourself – go to your Spotify Preferences to turn it on.

Paul Oakenfold’s already a fan! “I use Spotify daily. Many of my own releases are mixed so I’m delighted to hear Spotify will now offer gapless playback and crossfade so my fans can experience the mixes on Spotify in the way they normally do in the clubs.”

To check out what a difference gapless playback makes give Paul Oakenfold’s latest compilation album a spin: Four Seasons - Winter (Mixed Version).

The full features list for this release:

• Gapless playback (‘on’ by default)
• Crossfade support (‘on’ via Preferences)
• Faster artist browsing
• New save and restore feature for ‘Now Playing’
• Improved Subscribe, Buddy List and Favourites options
• Drag & drop fixed on Windows
• ‘Hide purchase buttons’ option (Premium-users only)
• ‘Offline Mode’ via Spotify menu

When will you get all this?

We’ve started rolling out the new release of Spotify today. As soon as we’re ready to update your account, Spotify will ask you to restart.

Here’s to more music and less silence!

Our friends at @thursplay have compiled this playlist for February.

Time to reveal the songs we played on repeat this February here at #thursplay! On this playlist, find 25 tracks of hand picked indie music, some of them just released.

To start with, Sleigh Bells with their addicting “Rill Rill”, because even though they just released a new album , that’s still our favorite!

To celebrate their sixth studio album ‘Roses’ on February 27th, The Cranberries have released six tracks from the album in an exclusive sampler just for Spotify users. It includes special live versions of the classic Cranberries’ hits ‘Zombie’ and ‘Linger’, recorded in Madrid in 2010.

Check it out here.

We can’t get enough of the ShareMyPlaylists.com app! With tens of thousands of hand-curated playlists at your fingertips, who wouldn’t?

This Spotify app showcases the most original playlists submitted by users as well as the most popular playlists from ShareMyPlaylists.com. We love the personalized recommendations based on your listening habits and the Playlist Generator. Creating a playlist based on an artist or band you love is just a click away.

It’s also simple to share your playlists - just drag & drop a playlist directly from your Spotify sidebar into the app and it’ll be published on the ShareMyPlaylists.com app. Presto!

It’s never been easier to share and explore playlists. Come this way to discover ShareMyPlaylists.com.

Our friends at This Day in Music are bringing us some of the most relevant events that happened this week, along with a playlist for each day. Read along and enjoy these musical flashbacks.

22nd February, Andy Warhol, pop artist and producer, dies after a gall bladder operation. A leading light of the Pop Art movement, he produced and managed The Velvet Underground, and designed the 1967 Velvet Underground and Nico ‘peeled banana’ album cover as well as The Rolling Stones’ 1971 Sticky Fingers album cover.

Warhol worked in a range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, film, and music. He founded Interview Magazine and was the author of numerous books, including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism: The Warhol Sixties.

Songs about Andy

February 23rd. In 1998 all the members of Oasis were banned for life from flying Cathay Pacific Airlines after “abusive and disgusting behaviour” during a flight from Hong Kong to Perth, Australia. One report stated that Liam had threatened the pilot with a scone. Yes a scone?

And in 2001, British Airways staff complained about Oasis singer Liam Gallagher after he had grabbed a stewardess’ bottom, refused to stop smoking and had thrown objects around the cabin during a flight from London to Rio De Janeiro.

Come Fly With Me

February 24th, 1973. Roberta Flack had her second US No.1 when “Killing Me Softly With His Song”, started a five-week run at the top. The song was written about US singer songwriter Don McLean.
The song has been remade by numerous artists, most notably the Fugees whose rendition charted at number two, contributing to their Grammy Award-winning album, The Score.

Songs about people

February 25th, 2006. George Michael was found slumped over in a car in Hyde Park, London. A concerned person spotted the singer and called police who after being checked by paramedics was arrested on suspicion of possessing drugs and then released on bail. Michael made a public statement about the incident and said “I was in possession of class C drugs which is an offense and I have no complaints about the police who were professional throughout.” He also said that the event was “my own stupid fault, as usual.”

Playlist for this day.

Feb 26th, 1990. Sinead O’Connor was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Her version of the Prince penned song was also a No.1 hit in 18 other countries.
Taken from the Irish singers album I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got the track was written by Prince for one of his side-projects, The Family.

This day’s playlist.

Feb 27th, 2007. pictures appeared in UK papers of Babyshambles singer Pete Doherty making a trip to a zoo in Burford Oxfordshire with his model girlfriend Kate Moss. He was blasted by vets after pictures showed Pete throwing a left over cannabis joint into a group of penguins.

Zoo Station

Feb 28th, 1970. In an interview with the New Musical Express, Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green talked about his plans to give all his money away. The following year Green confronted his accountant with a gun after he sent him an unwanted royalty check. The guitarist went to jail briefly before being transferred to an asylum and was committed to a mental hospital in 1973. He re-launched his career in the 90’s.

Money playlist

On February 18th hundreds of contestants fought for the prizes in Spotify Code Quest 2012, trying to solve eight challenging programming problems, ranging from hunting mischievous trolls to figuring out the bandwidth usage of streaming applications.

The contest started in a flurry, with many contestants solving the easiest problem, “Troll Hunt”, in just a few minutes. After the first hour, several people had already solved half of the problems.

At three hours, with an hour left to go, two contestants, Vladyslav Simonenko and Neal Wu, had solved six out of the eight problems. Shortly thereafter, they were joined by Vitalii Nevidomyi and Wesley Cao. The race was now on. Would someone get a seventh problem and overtake Vladyslav’s lead?

With just 9 minutes left, Neal Wu became the first contestant to solve the previously unsolved “Greedy Cows” problem, and jumped up to first place with seven problems solved. However, just one minute later, Vladyslav Simonenko countered with his own solution to “Greedy Cows”, taking back his place at the top of the scoreboard with a smaller total time than Neal.

The top two were the only contestants to solve seven problems. Vitalii Nevidomyi took the third spot with six problems solved. The top ten contestants solved five or more problems. Ultimately, all eight problems were solved, even though no contestant solved all of them.

The final standings can be found at https://contest.codequest.spotify.com/standings/.

To reach one of the coveted top 100 spots, landing contestants a Spotify Code Quest T-shirt, one either had to solve a single problem within 30 minutes, or solve more than 1 problems. The contest saw a total of 4,214 attempted solutions, of which 485, or roughly 11.5%, were correct. The most popular programming language was Java, with 2500 attempts, followed by C++, with 1440 attempts and C with 274 attempts.

We present you the music selection that our friends from Sharemyplaylists have handpicked for this month.

NME Awards 2012

We’re proud to unveil NME as our newest playlist partner. ‘The nominees of the NME Awards 2012 in one bite-size package,’ that’s how they describe this mixtape. Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian, The Horrors, The Strokes, Arcade Fire, PJ Harvey and a whole host of indie glitterati feature here. Just add mad hair, tight trousers and copious amounts of champagne for that authentic NME Awards experience from the comfort of your own home. Click here for more NME mixtapes.

Not on Hospital Radio

This next playlist is by far the funniest we received this month – maybe even ever. The concept is simple: a collection of the most inappropriate songs you could play hospital radio. Here’s our favourites: The Drugs Don’t Work; I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead; Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door; If Tomorrow Never Comes; No Tomorrow. Well done, ichacawab. Genius.

100 Favourite Songs of 2012

A good playlist to subscribe to, this one. Mårten is working on his “100 favourite indie rock songs of 2012″. So far, he’s got gems from Bat For Lashes, Leonard Cohen, The Maccabees, The Shins and numerous other sonic delights. We’re looking forward to watching this one grow.

BBC Radio 6music - Viva Sweden documentary

Everyone knows the best pop music in the world comes from Sweden. For proof, check out this playlist made of tunes featured in Danny Robins’ documentary, Viva Sweden, broadcast on BBC 6music this month – Lykke Li, The Hives, Jose Gonzalez, The Knife, Little Dragon and more. Superb.

Frankie Knuckles

Right, who’s up for a little boogie? If you are, this is the mixtape for you – over three hours of Frankie-Knuckles-Chicago-house-heaven. As well as tunes and remixes from the Godfather of House himself, this mixtape also features Marshall Jefferson, Jamie Principle, Ultra Nate, Jackson 5, Hercules And Love Affair, Luther Vandross and stacks more besides. Superb mixtape. Well played, SMP user Paul Shipley.

Afront’s Hi-NRG

SMP user Afront, King of the outre mixtape, has been at again. Ever heard of Hi-NRG? Nope, us neither. “Related to italo-disco, eurobeat and synthpop,” he explains, “Hi-NRG is seriously funky disco music with staccato synth sounds and octave basslines.” If that doesn’t whet your appetite, nothing will. Where can you hear such a noise? Here.

Unsigned Finds Volume 8: The Next New Thing

We think it’s about time we had a look at the latest addition of the brilliant Unsigned Finds series, don’t you? If you’re not familiar with hoxsd1’s mixtapes, they’re the best place to discover new and unsigned artists on Spotify. (Previous editions here.) In particular, check out How To Dress Well, The Twerps, POLICIA and Lazy Daisey.

The Soundtrack to February 2012

“Thwack,” goes Phil Wilce’s introduction to the latest edition of his uber-monthly mixtape. “Here come 50 of finest for you to feast on in February.” Let’s have a gander, shall we? odd Terje, M83, the Maccabees, the Big Pink, Django Django and more make this essential listening.

The Evolution of the Hipster

“Before there were hipsters,” says hoxsd1, ”there were hepsters, and beatniks and hippies and hep cats. And here is what they’ve listened to.” Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac, Miles Davis, Allen Ginsberg, Leonard Cohen, The 13th Floor Elevators, Nick Drake, Gil Scott-Heron … Check them all out, and more, right here. 

Whitney Houston Tribute

We round things off this weekend with a tribute to “one of the greatest voices of our time”, Whitney Houston. Check out our look back over a glittering career, cut tragically short. Whitney Houston 1963-2012