Check out a brand new short film from The Knife to help promote the very recent UK release of "Heartbeats": http://playlouder.com/news/+forkit/
Quite possibly one of the best band promos ever.

The Knife say they are working on a new album and hope to have it out around fall 2005.

The Rex the Dog remix of "Heartbeats" from The Knife will be appearing on the upcoming "The Trip" compilation series, compiled by Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol. Full tracklist here: http://nme.com/news/109805.htm

The Knife's excellent sophomore album "Deep Cuts" finally went gold in Sweden with sales of 30k copies. Rabid Records will be releasing a new version of the album on October 18 with three bonus tracks from the "Hannah med H" soundtrack and a DVD with five videos.

Serpentine Music is the name of the a new music label collective being started by singer/songwriter Jenny Lundblad that's set to begin in September. The group plans to help promote up-and-coming artists by getting their music in stores and helping them with accounting, publishing and so forth. They're trying to emulate the success of other Swedish DIY artists such as The Concretes, The Knife and Marit Bergman and eventually they even hope to offer all sorts of related services such as radio promotion, photography, advertising and more - the musical equivilent to Ikea they say. It's obviously a promising idea, considering that indie labels don't appear to be suffering quite as much as the majors these days and the overhead will probably be kept quite low, but my concern is that the group will quickly become watered down with lesser talent. I'm not sure I would trust it, but then again, I barely trust anyone to take care of my business for me. The concept of the musical collectives is certainly viable at least (see Elephant 6 for example). Anyhow, read the whole article from MI: http://www.musikindustrin.nu/mi/smpage.fwx?page=198&NYHETER=4787

The Knife are features as the record of the day at, erm, Recordoftheday.co.uk.

Check out the various remixes of "Heartbeats" that will appear on the new Knife single: http://theknife.net/music/
In other news from The Knife, there's gonna be a DVD with all of their videos coming out on September 20. Pretty cool. And even though it's not all Scandinavian tunes, here's a link to download an entire mixtape of hard techno from DJ Coolof aka Olof Dreijer: http://www.kilotin.se/index.php?goto=music/view&id=11

Here's this week's top 20 Swedish albums:

01. Gyllene Tider - Finn 5 Fel
02. The Hives - Tyrannosaurus Hives
03. Benny Anderssons Orkester - Bao!
04. Vikingarna - Bästa Kramgoa Låtarna
05. Gyllene Tider - Gt 25 - Samtliga Hits!
06. Ted Gärdestad - Sol Vind & Vatten - Det Bästa
07. Robert Wells - Rhapsody In Rock Anniversary
08. Europe - Rock The Night: The Very Best Of Europe
09. Günther & the Sunshine Girls - Pleasure Man
10. Teddybears Sthlm - Fresh
11. Agnetha Fältskog - My Colouring Book
12. Marit Bergman - Baby Dry Your Eye
13. Infinite Mass - 1991
14. Jimmy Jansson - Flickan från det blå
15. Backyard Babies - Stockholm Syndrome
16. Per Gessle - Mazarin
17. Pugh Rogefeldt - Bästa
18. Shirley Clamp - Den Långsamma Blomman
19. Sahara Hotnights - Kiss & Tell
20. Di Leva - Tiden Faller

It was originally set to come out in July, but now The Knife is saying the "Heartbeats" single will be out in the UK on September 6 and the full album "Deep Cuts" will follow on September 20. Tracklist and more info: http://www.theknife.net/

More additions to the Arvika lineup: Salvatore, Svenska akademien, The Iskariots, Disfear, David Sandström, Square, Deltahead, Assid, Flora & Fauna w/Olof Dreijer aka DJ Coolof (The Knife).
Check out the full schedule: http://www.galaxen.se/laddaner/runningorder_arvikafestivalen.pdf

Karin Dreijer of The Knife is getting her own program this summer on Swedish radio which will air on June 16. Her set will cover topics such as music politics, feminism and the evils of the guitar. Read more here: http://www.sr.se/p1/sommar/2004/vardar/040617.stm (in Swedish)

The Knife will be releasing a single for "Heartbeats" in the UK on both CD and 12" vinyl in July. Tracklists:

Heartbeats CD single RABIDCD020
01. Heartbeats - Original
02. Heartbeats - Rex The Dog
03. Heartbeats - The Knife Techno Remix
04. Afraid Of You

Heartbeats 12" RABIDT020
A1. Heartbeats - Original
A2. Heartbeats - Style Of Eye
B1. Heartbeats - Rex The Dog
B2. Heartbeats - The Knife Techno Remix

Download the video for "Handy Man" from The Knife: http://www.rabidrecords.com/rabid/video/TheKnife_Handyman.mov

The English website hooj.com now has audio files on sale from The Knife.

Here's this week's top 20 Swedish albums from Aftonbladet:

01. Sara Löfgren - Starkare
02. Per Gessle - Mazarin
03. Sophie Zelmani - Love Affair
04. Lisa Miskovsky - Fallingwater
05. Jill Johnson - Roots and wings
06. Peter LeMarc - Det som håller oss vid liv
07. Arns rike - Arn the gothia
08. Carola - Guld platina & passion
09. Alice Babs - Alice babs bästa
10. José González - Veneer
11. Moneybrother - Blood panic
12. Patrik Isaksson - Vi som aldrig landat
13. Backyard Babies - Stockholm Syndrome
14. Tomas Andersson Wij - Stjärnorna i oss
15. Viktoria Tolstoy - Shining on you
16. Nicolai Dunger - Here's my song you can have it....
17. September - September
18. Mauro Scooco - La dolce vita
19. The Knife - Deep Cuts
20. Cornelis Vreeswijk - Cornelis Vreeswijks bästa

A bit of Planekonomi news...

Monkeystrikes is getting ready to shoot a video for the first single "Lost on the Lawn" from their debut EP "Angry Knees". Henry Moore Selder (The Hives, The Knife, Jimi Tenor) will direct. Also, on the same day the EP is released on March 31, the band will hit the road for a couple weeks. Dates and details soon.

The next Mattias Alkberg BD single from his album "Tunaskolan" will be "Don Quixote" and it will be released in April. As for the album track "Levande Begravd" ("buried alive"), look for a special limited edition 7" of that coming soon from Hot Stuff. It's a cover of Swedish punk legends Liket Lever just in case you were unaware (like me).

Lastly, the label would like to welcome Stockholm-based band Stella Rocket to the family. Their debut album was produced by the ever-talented Jari Haapalainen of Bear Quartet and will be out soon. In case you didn't know, Jari's previous credits include bands such as The Concretes, Laakso and Moneybrother.