Indie Supergroup Discovery is Set to Unleash Its Brand of Technopop

The following news may make the nearest hipster or indie kid collapse in utter joy and excitement: Rostam Batmanglij, Vampire Weekend's keyboardist and producer, has teamed up with Ra Ra Riot's lead vocalist Wes Miles to form the music world's latest supergroup Discovery. The band's debut album, imaginatively titled LP, is set to be released upon the world on July 7 through XL Recordings (which is home to acts as wide-ranging as Adele, Radiohead, Devendra Banhart, The White Stripes, and MIA, as well as Vampire Weekend itself). The new music, which can be heard on the band's MySpace site and their official website, veers into decidedly new territory; largely absent are the two band's organic string and drum instrumentation, replaced by synth beats and atmospheric electro swirls. The result is slightly melancholic, but still well-written, club music that manages to accomplish two feats: it is able to get people dancing, but it also goes deeper than standard techno music which, more often than not, can't exist outside of the club setting. Discovery has created a set of songs that sound great no matter where it's heard; the music is just as effective listened to in a pulsating nightclub or through one's headphones in their living room.

The track listing for their debut album can be found on the band's official website, with four of the ten songs available to stream: "Orange Shirt", "Osaka Loop Line", "So Insane", and "Swing Tree". The remaining six tracks are titled "Can You Discover?", "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend", "Carby", "I Want You Back (In Discovery)", "It's Not My Fault (It's My Fault)", and "Slang Tang". "I Want You Back" is a synth cover of the Jackson 5 classic, while "Can You Discover?" is a remix of Ra Ra Riot's "Can You Tell?". Vampire Weekend lead vocalist Ezra Koenig lends a helping hand on a few tracks, as does the Dirty Projectors' singer Angel Deradoorian.

As for their respective bands, Vampire Weekend is currently working on a follow-up album to their critical smash and breakthrough self-titled debut which they hope to release this fall. Ra Ra Riot is spending the remainder of the year touring; they are playing alongside Death Cab for Cutie, Andrew Bird, and the New Pornographers through July 31 before they begin their fall headline tour with Maps & Atlases and Princeton in September.