Here are my top 5 thus far for 2012 (unordered), plus a bonus entry.

1. Fort Lean - 7” single

The best way to describe Fort Lean is to imagine a 90’s british pop vibe mixed with a classic american rock band from the late 70’s. Very spacey at times, with lots of highs and lows in front man’s Mitchell’s voice. Their new 7” single is inspiring and hopeful. 

Image courtesy of biguglyyellowcouch.com

2. Bear in Heaven - ”I love you, it’s cool”

These guys have been around for a while and need no further introduction, their new record “I love you, it’s cool” is just pure dance gold. 

Image courtesy of http://proflosers.files.wordpress.com/

3. Lower Dens - Nootropics

Baltimore based lower dens make some pretty dense electronic tracks with an eerie feel to them. Can’t wait for Nootropics to drop. In the meantime listen to their single Brains.

Image courtesy of http://www.gnomonsong.com/

4. You Won’t - Skeptic Goodbye

Pretty solid indie folk record. Reminiscent of the shins.

Image courtesy of http://youwont.bandcamp.com/

You can listen to their entire recorde here:  http://youwont.bandcamp.com/

5. Yellow Ostrich - Strange Land

Yellow Ostrich is one of my favorite bands and their new album does not disappoint. It could very well be better than their debut album. Marathon Runner, Daughter, and I have no time for you are stand outs.

Although this album is from 2010, it’s worth mentioning since Port St. Willow is super underrated. Look for some new stuff soon.

Port St. Willow - Even//Wasteland (Mini Album)

Mysterious mini album including a 10 minute song. Overall pleasant harmonies.

Image courtesy of biguglyyellowcouch.com

http://portstwillow.bandcamp.com/

Today will be my last day at Zynga, as I’ll be leaving to embark on a new adventure. I’ll be starting a new company with my good friend Ben Bloch (Foodspotting)

The last year and few months at Zynga have served as a tremendous learning experience. The gratification of writing, and architecting code that is served to millions of people everyday is tremendous and I will forever be grateful to everyone at Zynga that enabled me to thrive in such an environment. As bitter-sweet, and difficult as it is, the time has come for me to leave Zynga, and build my own product. We have some excellent people on our side and are ready to jump in and execute.

It’s very clear that social, mobile location based applications are on the rise right now, and building a solution to a problem in that space is what we intend to do. What we are going to make is a dead simple social utility for organizing and participating in spontaneous events. It could be gathering friends for Sunday brunch, or organizing a nice bike ride along the Embarcadero. The point is that we are going to facilitate these types of gatherings, and solve a lot of inherent group communication problems. Of course this is only the foundation, and many more avenues will be explored once this basic system is in place and proven.

I am very excited, and passionate about getting to work on our product full time. Now that it has our full attention we will be able to put the best effort forward in quickly releasing a kick ass product and building out our company’s vision. Expect updates and announcements in the next coming months, including the name of our company and a better idea of when we will release our private alpha.

If you are interested in working with us, or being part of the private alpha, you can hit me up on twitter or email me for more information.

Really catchy tune from these guys

Really loving this new single. Kind of forgot about them since “Return to Cookie Mountain” 

Been listening to this one a lot lately.

The lead up to the chorus on this song is pure gold

A little older, but awesome nonetheless.

The blogs has become a little stale, so I’m going to post one track a day. Let’s see how long I keep this up