Hipster watch: ArpLine

I've recently acknowledged the fact that yes, I am a hipster. Months of denial has seen me mock and criticise hipsters from afar, but like most bigotry, it was just hiding the fact that I identified with it.

(Thank you toothpaste for dinner. I bet you are as much of a hispter as me, the way you mock them)

So now that I've embraced the hipster in me, I'm taking off my ridiculously stupid sunglasses, replacing them with my thick-rimmed reading glasses and I've decided I'll start a new occassionally recurring segment of my blog: Hipster Watch. The idea of this segment will be to try and beat the hipster bandwagon to things. Because let's face it, it's no longer hip when more than 10 people know about it.

The first hipster band is ArpLine.

Arpline "Make It Rain" Nutroaster Studio from VVUSIC on Vimeo.

Let's go through the hipster checklist:

• Synthesizer - check
• From Brooklyn - check (for anyone who's never been there, right now it's as hip as hip gets)
• Ridiculous haircut - check (see the lead singer in the video)
• Plaid - check (lead singer, once again)
• Distorted/changed vocals - check
• Electronica/genre defying mixes - check

Before you've even properly listened to their music, you can just tell straight away they're hipsters.

So what do you need to know about them? Mainly that they're like Animal Collective (the original hipsters' hipster band) but with less weird-ass sounds and more melody. They put out an album last year, entitled Travel Book, and it seems that we're about to get some Australian distro for it. So stay tuned, there will probably be a tour soon where all of the hipsters can stand around, talking and pretending not to enjoy the show at all.

If you want to be more hip than most hipsters by listening to ArpLine, you can grab a free MP3 of their new single Fold Up Like A Piece of Paper right here. You can also go to their website to grab more free MP3s, including covers of bands that we don't know (because that's hip).