Check out more Hangout Fest 2013 GIFs in our gallery.

Towards the end of the Shins‘ Hangout Music Festival set, lead Shin James Mercer came clean with the Gulf Shores crowd. Sort of. “I was walking on the beach earlier today, and I stepped on a seashell,” he said. “It broke. I’ll send you a seashell.”

That was one of many wry comments from Mercer, who is usually happy to just run through his songs without a word to the crowd. Tonight’s set was different — maybe it was the white sandy beach setting of Gulf Shores, Alabama. Mercer did, in fact, dedicate “Bait and Switch” to “whoever invented the bikini.” Or maybe it was the moment he successfully dodged a kite that came dangerously close to his head while in the middle of “Australia.” Or maybe he was feeling jazzed after recruiting singer-songwriter Jessie Baylin to help the band out on backing vocals for “Simple Song” and “It’s Only Life.” (Baylin’s husband, Nathan Followill, headlined with his band Kings of Leon across the beach after the Shins.) Whatever the reason, the crowd ate up the band’s 18-song super-sized set.

Over the years, Mercer’s taken the band’s peppy indie-rock and twisted it into something more psychedelic and country-infused. Their Hangout set continued this trend, with a handful of spacey song intros on “Kissing the Lipless” and their classic ballad, “New Slang,” which trickled out of an eerie ending to “Port of Morrow.” Other set highlights included the Port of Morrow opener “The Rifle Spiral,” which segued into a rather choppy version of “Caring is Creepy,” a haunting version of “Saint Simon” and set-closer “One by One All Day.”

This set caps an interesting week for the band, as they once again found one of their songs tied to a pivotal film moment (the first one being their association with the Zach Braff flick, Garden State). “Simple Song” was on the season finale of How I Met Your Mother, during the final scene in which “the mother” was finally revealed.

The Shins are on tour for the rest of May, bringing Ra Ra Riot along for the ride. Hangout Music Fest continues throughout the weekend with performances by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Kendrick Lamar, Dirty Projectors, Holy Ghost! and more.

With the first day of Hangout Festival 2013 underway, orchestral indie-rock act Ra Ra Riot treated fans to an energetic afternoon set, which featured a host of tracks from their new sci-fi-influenced new album, Beta Love. First thing you’ll notice when watching them perform the title track? Lead singer Wes Miles came prepared with proper ’80s-inspired cabana wear, oddly befitting for the neon backdrops. (Along with “Beta Love,” you can watch full performance clips of “Dance With Me,” “Angel Please,” “I Shut Off” and “Boy.”)

The Syracuse-based band has steadily broken out of the Northeast since 2006, and consistently picked up a host of fans all around the country. Several thousand of those fans arrived to the Shores of Alabama early this afternoon, packing the Boom Boom tent. It’s a testament to the band’s growth and the power of, well, booze, sun, ocean and swag.

Ra Ra Riot are currently in the midst of a lengthy spring tour which finds them opening for the Shins — who also play the festival today — at large clubs and theaters. The band also landed a handful of coveted spots opening for the Postal Service this June.

Passion Pit, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, and Kings of Leon close out the rest of Day One of Hangout, now in its fourth year. Weekend performances are on tap from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Stevie Wonder, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Kendrick Lamar and more. Catch full performances, photos and more from the fest over at Hangout Festival 2013.

Music fans have an eclectic weekend ahead of them: Set to perform are the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Kendrick Lamar, the Shins, Jim James, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Stevie Wonder, the Breeders, Dirty Projectors, Holy Ghost, Steve Aoki and many others.

We’ll have three different camera angles to choose from at any given moment, plus a host of exclusive news and show reports. So kick back and … hangout!

Photo: Spomer Photography

Together Chicago natives Derek Berry and Rick Carrico are the DJ and production duo Team Bayside High. The pair originally began collaborating on Rehab, a weekly indie-dance party in Chicago that, according to this interview with the Dankles, attracted clientele like Aziz Ansari and Talib Kweli. Working off the success of the party, they began getting booked for outside gigs and producing their own remixes and edits, eventually getting noticed by MSTRKRFT and Bird Peterson. The duo have released music and spun at parties and festivals as members of Teenage Riot Records ever since.

They’re influenced by a wide range of genres, but Team Bayside’s most recent production leans toward big-room trap and hip hop. Appropriately, the duo flaunt tracks with lofty melodies and bass-heavy backbones on this latest mix for Hive. “The concept for this mix was to get everyone ready for festival season,” they explain. “Our favorite track off this has to be our bootleg we did of “Shout,” which has been setting off the past few shows and really feels like a summer jam to us.” Tracks from A Tribe Called Red, Crookers and Schlachtofbronx round out the rest of this colossal party set. Scroll down to view the entire tracklist.

Tracklist:
1.    Smookie Illson – Smoker’s Anthem
2.    The Under – LBMY (Team Bayside High Gunshot Edit)
3.    NEHON – Bolly World
4.    The World Class Art Thieves – Watermelon
5.    Hucci + GameFace – The Leave Are Brown
6.    A Tribe Called Red – Trap Heat
7.    Team Bayside High – In the Streets (Original Mix) (Unreleased)
8.    heRobust – Turn Ape x Team Bayside High ft. Hollywood Holt – Get Buck (Mixtape Edit)
9.    C & C Music Factory – Make You Sweat (Team Bayside High Trap the Bass Bootleg)
10.  Willy Joy & Team Bayside High – Hands Up
11.  Plastik Funk & Tujamo – Who (Victor Niglio Festival Trap Remix) (Team Bayside High Horn Edit)
12.  Basement Jaxx – Wheres Your Head At (Team Bayside High & Willy Joy Bootleg)
13.  This Is Paradise – Benzi and Willy Joy (Team Bayside High Mixtape Edit)
14.  Crookers & Digi – Stiaah!
15.  WRKD – Verve x Kendrick Lamar – Swimming Pools (Team Bayside High Drank Edit)
16.  D!RTY AUD!O – Internet
17.  Shake It Maschine & Mr. Pigman – I Feel x Mykki Blanco – Haze Boogie Life (Team Bayside High Strobe Lights Edit)
18.  Sonar Cousin – Velvet Rhino (Is It Soul)
19.  Jakwob – Fade (Sane Beats Remix)
20.  Nikes x Lefty x MoonDoctoR – $mokin Ha$h
21.  Banks – Fall Over (Djemba Djemba Remix) (Team Bayside High Amen Edit)
22.  Rustie – Triadz
23.  Schlachtofbronx – Slowine
24.  Schlachtofbronx – Slowine (Slick Shoota Fastwine) x BBU-Chi Don’t Dance (Team Bayside High All We Do Is Juke Edit)
25.  Reso – When It Drop
28.  Isley Brothers – Shout (Team Bayside High Summer Slam Remix)

Kuniyuki Takahashi, Vereker, Basic Soul Unit.

Every week or thereabouts, Mutant Dance Moves takes you to the shadowy corners of the dancefloor and the fringes of contemporary electronic music, where new strains and dance moves are evolving.

This week: a quick round-up of albums and singles, both old and new, that have been getting lots of dance moves from Mutant Dance Moves at home and in public.

Kuniyuki Takahashi

Feather World
Mule Musiq

Kuniyuki Takahashi is a well-respected engineer in Japanese electronic music circles, a genre of modern music that doesn’t always get heard outside of its homeland. Which isn’t to suggest that Takahashi is xenophobic with his own full-length. A look at the guest vocalists and musicians on Feather World reveals a producer with wide interests. There’s Malian musician/singer Sona Diabaté on “Africa Univers,” German minimal house master Henrik Schwarz on “The Session 2” and onetime Arthur Russell vocalist Joyce Bowden on the luminous closer “Forest Song.” No matter the collaborator though, Takahashi crafts some of the most sumptuous deep house on the planet right now, both featherweight and heavy.

Basic Soul Unit
Motional Response
Still Music

If you judge a record by its sleeve, Basic Soul Unit might be easy to skip. The first full-length offering from Toronto producer Stuart Li is quite a gift, regardless of the wrapping. After building a solid rep over the past eight years, releasing singles for imprints like Ostgut Ton, Mule Electronic, Crème Organization, and Versatile, Li finally delivers the goods with Motional Response. I’m hard-pressed to slot it though. There’s the pounding 4/4 of house, the keys and chords to suggest deep house, the more frantic beats associated with techno, synths that gurgle like acid lines, but it feels like a sumptuous whole rather than a set of tracks. Perhaps a clue can be found in the titles themselves: “Across the Room,” “Mind Forest,” Clouds,” all emphasize wide-open spaces. “Breathe” (the remix from Still Love boss Jerome Derradji is stellar as well) is the only track with vocals, uttering “I get so lost … what can I do?” but its measured pacing and audible breath itself makes it the standout among many.

Listen on Soundcloud

Vereker
Rosite and Fear Eats the Soul
L.I.E.S.

In just under two years, Ron Morelli’s Long Island Electrical Systems imprint has indoctrinated its fanbase well. If it has the L.I.E.S. logo on it, DJs and heads know that the grooves within will be primitive yet cutting-edge, brusque but beguiling. Their roster is already garnering increased exposure both stateside and overseas. Right at the moment, American producers on the roster like Steve Summers, SvengalisGhost, Delroy Edwards and Morelli himself are tearing through Europe like a Panzer division. But what will keep the imprint vital beyond the current moment is that Morelli continues to bring new producers to light. The Florian Knupfer EP vanished from shelves almost overnight and now comes Vereker, a UK-born, San Fran-based producer who keeps within the L.I.E.S. template: a drum machine that could be mistaken for the wet cardboard box it came in, a synth that sounds like it ate some bad Chinese takeaway, an ambience not unlike the stench coming off of the Greenpoint water treatment plant. And yet with a track on these EPs that namechecks Rainer Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, one should know that Vereker somehow gets more inky bleakness than his labelmates. Dark and heavy, just like L.I.E.S. likes ‘em.

Powell
Untitled EP
The Death of Rave

Recommended to me by a fellow L.I.E.S. enthusiast, the hard-to-trace producer Powell dropped this EP a few months back. It too relies on old-school analog technology to make something bracing in 2013. One track gets shoved along by a bass tone not unlike a tinfoil rubber band, another is half tape hiss/ half ungrounded wire buzz, while “Oh No New York” has all of those sounds in it and thuds along like some lost no wave track.

Could we get a real Game of Thrones cameo? What is Diddy may never die!

1. The Crystal Baller

It’s a BYOBall situation.

2. The Joyful Wavers

Overalls aren’t required but definitely encouraged.

3. The Drum Army

Drum-circle fact: Cowbells will never get old.

4. Zebra-human hybrids

This looks really hot but you’ll definitely make a lasting impression. 

5. Hula-hoop Enthusiasts

Hula-hooping with your arm seems pretty hard but there’s probably little risk involved. 

6. Crowd-Surfing Worshippers

Though the Flaming Lips aren’t on this year’s bill, expect any sort of crowd-surfing to be welcomed with open arms.

7. On-stage Booty Twirlers

The secret: it’s less about the booty, more about the twirl.