Surfing the Web for new music, video...

Surfing the Web for new music, video and MP3 downloads can be a serious time investment. Tips from Times staff and contributors will help take the drag out of your click-and-drag. Some downloads may contain explicit lyrics. Except as noted, all of the selections are free and available online at latimes.com/downloads. -- CASEY DOLAN

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“Boho Dance”

Bjork

www.atributetojonimitchell.com/bjork.html

This is a short and not downloadable mp3 version of Joni Mitchell’s extraordinary “Boho Dance” from the forthcoming multi-artist tribute to Joni Mitchell. An mp3 of Mitchell’s original follows with Bjork’s informative description of her debt to Mitchell. Bjork strips the arrangement down to an electric piano with backward effects and slows the tempo until the song becomes a precious, revelatory child’s dream of a downtown arts scene. Whereas Mitchell invests the song with a casually cynical weariness -- she knew these scenes well -- Bjork sings from the perspective of a wide-eyed Icelandic young girl seeing a world anew. Suggestion: listen to Mitchell’s version first; the crystal starkness of Bjork’s will reveal itself all the more.

“La marche de l’empereur”

Emilie Simon

youtube.com/watchvw7y38eW9bY8

As Bjork acknowledges in the above-referenced Joni Mitchell tribute, the other enormous influence on women songwriters and performers in the past 30 years has been Kate Bush. You hear Bush everywhere -- from the vocals and pianistic colors of Tori Amos to Imogen Heap’s usage of sonic collages. Simon is clearly another disciple in the Church of Bush. This song’s actual title is “Song of the Storm” and appears on the recent domestic release of Simon’s 2005 French album, “March of the Empress,” a thematic exposition of the Antarctic world. Simon’s band in this live performance from last year is like some Harry Partch ensemble thrust into the modern rock world. That stuttering tempo variance is not Youtube malfunctioning; that’s the correct performance of the song.

“Sunburned in Houston”

Sunburned Hand of the Man

www.ecstaticpeace.com/videos.php

Think of Glenn Branca, Albert Ayers or the Swans filtered through altered states and the dominance of the drone. Sunburned is a signee to Ecstatic Peace, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore’s label and forum for outre music -- a perfect home for this kind of band. Listen to the cascading noise and you might find yourself in a trance, but you will remember nothing in the morning. Nothing.

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