Indie loves indie

Play it: The White Stripes "Walking with a Ghost"
Play it: Indie Peer Covers
Play it: Tegan & Sara "Walking with a Ghost"
Play it: Sun Kill Moon Tiny Cities

Today, The White Stripes officially released their version of Tegan & Sara's "Walking With A Ghost," which is the rare cover that outshines the original. I have to admit that I mostly prefer Tegan and Sara to The White Stripes at this point, but Jack White's animated vocals and horror-flick backmasking send this one over the top to delicious heights and make me re-think The White Stripes again.

The single itself points to growing trend in the indie community of not just recording covers (which is out of control) but each other's music. Much of it is via live shows (see Now That's What I Call Indie Covers, via You Ain't No Picasso,) or special one-offs (see The Believer's Covers Compilation.) But recent full-fledged releases highlight the attraction to 'throw some love' in the direction of peers that artists admire and respect. Red Painters singer Mark Kozelek's side-project Sun Kill Moon just released a full album of Modest Mouse covers (Tiny Cities,) Bloc Party's remix album features a great cover of "Luno" from Toronto's Death From Above 1979, and Hard-Fi made sure The White Stripes' were covered as well with their "Seven Nation Army" (The Flaming Lips also covered it on their limited edition Late Night Tales album released earlier this year.)

Most of the time, the cover love has been reserved for those who came before and didn't get their due, so it's interesting to see songs less then a year old getting this kind of respect.

tags: playlist, music, indie rock, covers, white stripes, tegan and sara, bloc party, death from above 1979, mark mozelek, sun kill moon, modest mouse