Combo De La Muerte is one of the best tribute bands that I heard. Their myspace says that they are from Italy and that they play voodoo latin jazz music and that is actually the best definition of their style. Lot of Latina rhythms and percussion, lot of jungle voodoo vibe and small jazz and world music influence. As for the covers the selection is awesome. Their best one in my opinion is the South Of Heaven, by famous thrash metal band Slayer. This evil and dark song was transformed into a beach-party vibe groovy piece. As for the other highlights the Hawaiian styled version of Ozzy Osbournes Mama I’m Coming Home and Brazilian styled Highway To Hell by AC/DC are definitely worth listening.

Rumor says that Doug was a Berklee College of Music graduate that ended up working in Crush Management (who are working with Decaydance). Doug was not afraid of showing his talent and playing some songs right during coffee breaks. The boss of the label Bob McLynn, was annoyed at first, but then understood that Doug is a very promising guy. He gave him a green light and the result is an album of classy jazz covers of radio hits by Decaydance artists. The best thing about the album is that it has a great musical part. Dougs vocals and guitars are backed by a full jazz band with orchestration and other stuff. It sounds great and it is definitely a must have for any Decaydance fan.

Her last album – Irgendwo auf der Welt, is a step away from the punk past to a swing-jazz future. The whole album is filled with good old hits like Summertime, Bei mir bist du schen and Deep in a Dream. While Nina was not always praised for her music, her voice was always spectacular and this album proves it. The German language hits are reminiscent of the pre-war cabaret era and the English ones (sung with this cool German accent) remind of the glorious times when jazz and swing ruled the earth.

Bit similar to Mad Marge and the Stonecutters but totally different. While both of these chix take most of their influence from good old rockabilly Marge is more about punk and Imelda is totally about jazz. So it can be best described as swing/jazzabilly. Of course we still have the female hot rod rockabilly vocals but big part of the record is still very jazzy.

Love Tattoo is a definitely my personal hit of the summer. It has the raw rock power and calm cocktail jazz bit of unmixable but almost all the songs are hits. While my personal two favorites are Smokers Song and Love Tattoo I still like the clicking upright bass in Johny Got A Boom Boom and gentle melodies of Knock 123 and Meet You At The Moon. The rest of the record is pure rockabilly nothing exceptional just keeping you in the mood between the top tracks.

Actually this is not an independent artist.

But she’s definitely hot! Her music is a mix of soul, jazz and some 50 music that can’t be really classified. Yeah and also she has a nice British twist.

The best thing about Amy is her voice, it sounds like the voice of more experienced singers like Macy Gray but Amy was born in 83. My god first time I heard her I thought she was singing for like 20 years or more.

Well the best thing about her as for me is the image. She’s rude, tattooed and is not exactly the perfect image of a jazz singer. Her lyrics remind me of the rude old black jazz but with more modern approach. Strange cause she comes from a an English-Jewish family with a history of jazz musicians, already professionally singing at 16 debut album “Frank” released in 2003 and latest album “Back To Black” in 2006. Both of these albums are spectacular!

The best description for YMCK is 8-bit-jazz.

They make music that is generally called chiptune or 8-bit, as instruments they use mostly analog sounds from old console games. But when most of their colleagues use these sounds in more electronic way, YMCK use it a jazz instruments. You can clearly get the bass line, jazzy drums and various arrangement instruments like keyboards or probably brass. The whole music reminds of the 50^th smooth jazz especially the childish female vocals.

They have released two albums so far “Family Music” (2003) and “Family Racing” (2005) made few world tours and participated in some major electronic festivals. As for me their best success is a swing-styled song from the “Family Racing” album.

But this part won’t be about the history it will be about one of the most interesting thing that came out of it. A New Orleans Jazz Funeral! Even if you’ve never been to NOLA you can see one of that in James Bond “Live and Let Die”. An old tradition that was later almost banned by the catholic church and is practiced now only by black protestants.

The procession is divided into two parts. First part is walk to the funeral when the marching jazz band performs slow and tragic jazz part (mostly the gospel song “Just a Closer Walk with Thee”) like saying goodbye to the deceased. The Second Part or also called the Second Line is walking away from the graveyard. In the Second Line the melody is changed to hot jazz, symbolizing a joy of the fact that the deceased now joined “A Better Life”.

Actually this is one of the most interesting traditions that I ever encountered.

I’m personally a fan of different zombie stuff. Mostly zombie sound is something like from the 50^th some early rock and roll or swing or jazz. This is a soundtrack to a retro zombie game. Tunes from the 50^th and modern independent bands = omg it’s a success!

The bands include: Death Cab For Cutie, The Dandy Warhols, Ben Kweller, Phantom Planet etc.

The tunes are mostly well known from movies like back to future and cry baby, you can even find “Strangers in the Night Here”. The whole idea is brilliant and the realization is also great. It’s really cool to see that game developers are interested in keeping the retro horror style and not like in making a standard game. As for the best songs from this plate I can name Earth Angel by Death Cab For Cutie, Shakin’ All Over by Rose Hill Drive and Mr. Sandman by Oranger.

Murder by Death combines two very important things. First the atmosphere and second the intelligence. The style can be described as indie-folk-rock. But really they mix together some of the finest indie-rock with folk stuff similar to east European folk and pirate ballads and also adding some parts of country and jazz. The cello makes these elements mix together as a spectacular brew. Everything is connected but every next song gives you a completely new experience of what is called music. One album can begin with some pirate ship atmosphere and end as a relaxing jazz evening.

The earlier works are also interesting but still nothing can be compared to this album. As a single line I can describe them as: “Reinventing the music with a cello”.