Out of the depths of the over-saturated indie rock scene comes a refreshing addition with just enough spunk to stand out. After a year of searching for the perfect blend of band mates, DanseWolf is ready for action. They’ve already wrote and recorded a few songs which are on their self-titled promo CD and are in the process of  writing songs for their debut album coming later this year. Lucky for you we have a sneak peak of their newest song from their practice.

We’ve got lead singer Julz D, Erin Domina on bass, guitarist Andy Lagomarsino and Melissa Moskow on the drums. A definite indie style- lyrics sang with purpose, catchy tempo changes with a ‘driving rock edge’ as Julz put it. “Stray beats and hummed concepts at inception have matured into a true fusion of indie rock, blues and electronic with a backbone of soul” (Read the rest of their bio HERE). Everyone has a hand in writing and their songs range from shady INsignificant others, addiction (thought not what you may think) and even a romantic ballad. We can’t wait for the new album with a pumped up version of the Dansewolf you hear on their promo CD!

Hopefully you are keen on recognizing their jena se qua’ charisma and catch them at all their upcoming shows, starting June 23 at Dragonfly in Los Angeles. Stay connected with the DanseWolf on Myspace, Facebook & Twitter.

We caught up with the wolf pack in their studio for a video interview!

((click here if you can’t view the player))

Also check out a sneak peak of their new song “Smoke & Mirrors” from the studio:

((click here if you can’t view the player))

www.dansewolfmusic.com

-by Michelle Powell

MTV Games is hoping to goose sales of its flagging “Rock Band” series with a new service Tuesday that lets average users upload and sell videogame versions of their own music.

The service, known as the Rock Band Network Store, may offer a few minutes of fame to rudimentary garage bands by allowing millions of game players to access their music.

But given the technical know-how needed to format a song for the game—which may require users to hire a pricey third-party developer—the service could wind up serving mostly as a promotional platform for established acts with deeper pockets, rather than the typical shower singer.

“Rock Band” and its rival, “Guitar Hero,” are two of the most successful videogame franchises to debut in recent years. But sales of both titles have slowed significantly in the past year, with combined sales in 2009 of $224 million, according to an estimate from Wedbush Morgan Securities—less than 50% their level in 2008.

Until now, most of the music available for play on either game has consisted of a limited number of songs, mostly by major acts like Nirvana, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Beatles.

With the new service, unknown bands are seeing their chance to get in on the act. But popular groups not quite big enough to make the “Rock Band” playlist are also preparing material for the do-it-yourself upload store, including Creed and Evanescence, each of which has sold tens of millions of albums in the past decade.

“We expected this to be an initiative that would appeal to unsigned artists,” says Paul DeGooyer, MTV’s senior vice president for electronic games and music. “What was surprising to us was how many artists with hit records have offered themselves up.”

The Rock Band network has been running in a private, invitation-only testing mode since September. For now, it is to be available only to users of the Xbox 360, made by MicrosoftCorp., which was also MTV Games’ partner in building the Rock Band Network. MTV is part ofViacom Inc. The network eventually is to be made accessible to users of other game systems, like Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3.

Preparing a song is complicated, and involves preparing an array of specialized digital sound files, lyrics, transcriptions and even instructions for virtual camera angles, lighting and choreography for the animated characters that perform the music within the game itself.

It has already spawned a cottage industry of companies offering to format recordings, for fees that can get steep. These contractors, with names like Rhythm Authors LLC and RockGamer Studios, typically charge $500 per minute of music.

Other costs involved in creating a song include the purchase of an Xbox 360 console, “Rock Band” game discs and instruments, as well as a subscription to an online Microsoft game-development “community” that costs about $99 a year.

Rock Band Network lets users set prices anywhere from 99 cents to $2.99 a song. The company retains 70% of the sale price, with the rest going to the user. Given the figures, musicians must be fairly confident they’ll sell real numbers of songs to justify their investment.

Sub Pop, a prominent independent record label, is paying various contractors to prepare 25 songs that it plans to upload to the store—all of them by acts among the label’s most commercially successful.

Those include the Shins, whose 2007 album “Wincing the Night Away” reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album-sales chart; comedy-music duo Flight of the Conchords; and indie-rock stalwarts like Mudhoney, Sleater-Kinney and the Postal Service.

Sub Pop was the original record label of Nirvana, but much of that band’s catalog is already available for “Rock Band.”

The label is treating the undertaking as a serious creative endeavor. It hired a prominent record producer, Phil Ek, to mix the music before delivering it to the contractors who format it for the game.

“At $3 apiece nobody’s looking to ‘Rock Band’ as a discovery tool,” predicts Tony Kiewel, head of artists-and-repertoire at Sub Pop. “That’s not going to happen,” he says.

From: WSJ.com