Last month we posted about our friends in the band Side Effect who are trying to raise funds to record and tour. Side Effect is from Myanmar and they really need your help to make their dreams a reality. So please watch the video below and donate whatever you can to their cause. Go to: http://www.indiegogo.com/SideEffectMyanmar for more information.

Side Effect – Myanmar – visit www.indiegogo.com/SideEffectMyanmar to help us continue to make music! from Side Effect Myanmar on Vimeo.

National Public Radio (NPR) in the US has listed Sound Kapital for consideration in their annual readers poll. You can vote for us at NPR.org. Voting will remain open until 5 p.m. ET on Tuesday, December 13.

Due to a series of very unfortunate events, we are unable to make it to Bucharest tonight. Everyone in this beloved city knows that we feel they are family so I cannot express how deeply sad we are not to be there. We love you immensely. To those in Cluj-Napoca, we will see you tomorrow… And we cannot wait.

Due to a personal trauma we are having to cancel the Vienna show. We are immensely sorry. We love Vienna always and feel terribly. We will make it up to you when we can. 

Every year Sub Pop asks some of their artists to do a top 10 list of music or events that shaped their year. You can read all of the lists over at SubPop.com. Here’s Alexei’s:

Top “Ten” Great Things From 2011 In No Particular Order

Number one: Belgrade Punk band Repetitor’s debut album Sve Sto Vidim Je Prvi Put

Number two: Making out on a docked Ukranian gun ship/venue in Budapest prior to stage time

Number three: Crossing eight borders in sixteen hours touring through the Balkans with Bernays Propaganda

Number four: Terreneo Festival in Sibenik

Number five: Martinis in a can at 3am on day off in post-recession deserted Reno Nevada

Number six: Sweatiest backstage wardrobe change in chapel of First Unitarian church with Thee Satisfaction

Number seven: Onstage vs frontrow full frontal nudity at a squat show in Berlin

Number eight: PDX police bust us during “fake raping” of “What About Us?” director Scott Coffey

Number nine: Encore at Neumos in Seattle the band grows exponentially to include Suuns and Talk Demonic

Number ten: Four minute crowd surf at Palaty Kulturana in Warzaw

Number eleven: PJ Harvey sighting at show in London

Number twelve: After thirty minute “interrogation” by Swedish narcotics officers, realizing that merely raising your voice is an effective way to avoid a trip to the police station in Scandinavia

Number thirteen: The dingy that transported our uninsured gear to our show at Beach number five in Lake Ohrid Macedonia (plus naked nightswimming afterwards!)

Number fourteen: The amazing young man who came out to his parents immediately before coming to our show in Boston and then danced harder than anyone in attendance

Number fifteen: Our tour manager eerily and robotically being able to sing every single word of every single song played on XM radio’s Back Spin… “She’s so fly she’ll drive you right out of your mind. Steal your heart when your blind. You’ll fall in love and you’ll be screaming dreaming. Never trust a big butt and a smile. That girl is poison.”

Number sixteen: The fact that Prince Hubertus is a real person and we met him and his shinily bejeweled and wildly patterned crew in the sketchiest back alley of East Hastings where a junkie was practicing his knife throwing skills at a telephone pole

Number seventeen: Epic Lord of the Rings style mushroom picking adventure followed by day long smoke sauna in the Finnish countryside

Number eighteen: Crazy ass May Day party in the hills above Sarejevo featuring live band on tiny porch and entire roast lamb

Number nineteen: Performing as punk rock karaoke super group with No Age after packed secret show in the basement of an Albanian restaurant in Skopje. Karaoke band begins covers of Black Flag, CCR, Bob Dylan and others four hours after show had officially ended.

We’re playing the 2012 Frostbite Music Festival in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada! So excited! Tickets and passes are on sale now: https://www.yukontickets.com/

Han Xia directed our brand new video for Serve the People! We love her. She wrote a little about her inspirations for the video and we wanted to share it with you. Thank you again to Han Xia and to all our friends in Beijing. We miss you!

The very first time I met Handsome Furs was when I was in my second year of film school. I could not speak English and was immersed in weird music and films, awkward and shy. Then these two people showed up and kind of changed my life. As we walked around Beijing talking it was like finding a part of your family from the other side of the planet, it was so special.

I first heard the song (Serve the People) at a concert venue called 2kolegas. Handsome Furs began their second tour of China there. That was a drunken night, young people chatting and drinking everywhere. I totally got puzzled in this scene, I know they wrote this song for Asia, but as I looked at the people around me they seemed to be happy about who they are. Where they happy to lie to themselves, or had they already become used to a life without any freedom? The city behind us is extremely weird and beautiful. It feels like it’s gonna run like a crazy person at any second.

Alexei asked me if I wanna shoot a music video of this song. At almost the same moment, I thought about my high school classmate Yang. He is a cute, shy street cleaner who is into indie music a lot. His only interest is collecting records and listening to them. He goes to 2kolegas every weekend, and watches every gig alone. He doesn’t dance at all. He told me once that he dances in his heart, you cannot see it. This young man earns less than 300 dollars. He cleans the streets from sunrise to sunset; the people who walk behind him have no connection with him. He serves us, but nobody serves him. He knows nothing about how gorgeous the world is outside his mind. He has no idea when this kind of life ends. He feels he has no right to hate it.

However, I know clearly there are thousands of people living like this here in Beijing. I feel a connection with this complicated city. I also hate the invisible damage it brings to young people. This is a feeling I cannot translate with any language.

I cannot express my grateful heart with any kind of words. I do hope people like Yang will get to see this video, and that they will realize: I love myself and I can be a better person. I have not been abandoned by time.

This is my story. I believe you have your own stories with Handsome Furs as well. I love them not only because they are awesome people, or for the amazing music they make. It is because they are totally in love with life, and they have the power to connect this love with the lives of individuals, and then change these people with their passion. It is a god-given talent.

Han Xia Is 24 year old girl from Beijing who is in love with the Chinese independent music scene. She graduated from the stuffy and conservative Central Academy of Drama and has since worked as a music promoter and tour manager. As an aspiring music video director, she has many strange thoughts and explosive ideas which she puts into practice in her videos.

Here it is! Our brand new video for Serve the People. Directed by our lovely friend Han Xia. Watch the video below and read all about the video over at Stereogum.