Yes, there is a band called Oregon Bike Trails, and no, they aren’t from Oregon. But yes, they do make great music for cruising on your bike, and doing other fun stuff in the sun. We stumbled across this free track on You Ain’t No Picasso, accompanied by a nice little interview with OBT maestro Zach Yudin. Picking up where bands like Best Coast and The Cults left off last summer, there seems to be a real reverence for vintage 1960s California pop going on in indie music lately. We think it’s a gas, daddio.

If you do too, you can download not one, but two sunny songs from Oregon Bike Trails HERE.

As always, buy some music from this great new band and do your part in supporting 4-minute doses of vitamin D through your headphones.

Sometimes board meetings come up in the afternoon that are simply unavoidable. Last week one happened at around 3pm. And I had no other choice than to squeeze into my black suit and deal with three other members of the board.

Well, better a 3-hour board meeting than a 3-hour bored meeting, right?

Time to clean off my desktop. Seems like I’ve been stockpiling a lot of brightly-colored fotos lately. Must be a spring thing.

Happy Earth Day, everybody!

Wow. We are BARELY getting this Music Monday post in while it is still officially Monday. Paying taxes, dealing with the aftermath of a wild weekend, and of course the fact that it’s just a Monday have the potential to derail things. But songs like Rachel Goodrich’s “Light Bulb” have the power to make it all better again. On this remix, she teams up with fellow Floridians ANR (Awesome New Republic) to add a little low end to her sun-shiney single “Light Bulb.”

And, if you like the above, you can (and should) buy Rachel’s full album HERE.

When we first launched the Thought Kitchen, I had this idea that I would bring a little garbage home from the beach every time I surfed until I had enough junk to build some kind of art piece. I still have a bag of bottle caps, candy wrappers and broken cigarette lighters in my basement. Needless to say, it didn’t really work out. (It didn’t take me long to realize that I don’t get to the beach enough to build a monument of any significance.)

That’s not the case with Washed Ashore, a community art project sponsored by the Artula Institute of Bandon, Oregon. They’ve mobilized hundreds of people to collect plastics that have washed up on the beaches of Oregon to create large-scale sculptures of the wildlife affected by pollutants. Seagull feathers made of old flip-flops, whale bones made from milk jugs, a coral reef made from Styrofoam. In the words of Washed Ashore, this project acts “as an antidote to despair…” And it is, creating something beautiful from rubbish and raising awareness about a problem we can help fix.

If you’re in the Portland area, you can see for yourself when the traveling exhibit takes residence at Portland Community College’s Sylvania campus from April 20-June 10.

Last week I stumbled across a pretty amazing youtube channel by a guy in Sweden who calls himself “Log Cabineer.” He shoots these really simple videos of a record player spinning old vinyl in front of the landscapes surrounding his cabin. They are powerful, calming, and have the amazing ability to transport one from their seat in front of a computer screen to a magical outdoor setting. Something about the way each video feels like a still life, with very subtle movements—clouds shifting, a fly hitting the surface of the lake—and the music mixing with the ambient sounds of nature is really enchanting. Have a look. Oh, and check out the video where the dog grabs his beer on command. What a life.

Wow. I can just imagine the assignment in preschool: Do a drawing about your dad and share it with the rest of the class.

Now, as a young dad myself, I can totally relate to this scenario. Of course I’d love for my son to immediately whip out the magic markers and illustrate my surf passion just like Kai, the son of our friend Mark Hoffman, did a few weeks ago. In my dreams, the picture would be of a grizzled version of myself screaming down the face of a giant north coast bomb. Fearless. Unshakable.

But when the subject of the piece is the angst that only a surfer who has recently given up regular trips to the coast to be a good father knows, things get a bit bittersweet. Certainly my own son has heard me lament about sub-par surf conditions, plea for more water time, and while watching surf videos, pondered my answer to the question, “Can you do that, Dad?”

Of course, we hope that those little moments of bliss when you score a soft, long, perfectly formed left at Seaside hit home with the kids—or at the very least that fleeting feeling of freedom when you get a few hours away with friends and a few cold beers on the beach. But that’s a bit tougher to explain to a 5-year-old.

Kai’s dad is half of the directing duo, The Hoffman Brothers, and the auteur behind the Nau short video Spring Runoff.

When we first heard the tUnE-yArDs track “Bizness,” from the forthcoming album  w h o k i l l (April 18), we really thought it was an African-tinged world-beat song from the ‘80s. It was on a mixtape, which strips all context away, leaving only the sounds to speak for themselves. Then we dug a little deeper and found this amazing video. It combines a few things we love—unbridled movement, eye-catching design, rebellious kids—to compliment the upbeat soundtrack, which is quickly becoming the background music for our own Spring moves.

Download the track:
tUnE-yArDs | BIZNESS | DOWNLOAD

How do you raise €22M to build an environmental battle ship? Greenpeace has an innovative answer: Sell the boat off piece-by-piece, allowing donors to connect emotionally and financially to the cause.

Thanks to a brilliant feat of web design, the new Rainbow Warrior has wind in its sails, with 32.9% of the construction already funded. The website not only tells the story of the ship’s history in a dramatic way, but also lets you virtually navigate through its plans, “browsing” the items you can fund from a €1 fork to €7,000 desalinater.

Another great feature is a time-lapse video of the ship’s construction progress, showing that the end result is tangible and that you, as a part owner, are steps closer to launching your vessel for change.

Found via CoolHunting

Nothing gets us going like a nice, long downward scroll through a bunch of inspiring
photos. Here are a few we’ve been fixated on lately—click the pic to check the blog:

Swallowtail Society
Para Naiv
Grass Doe
Itwon’tfuckingkillyou
Non Surveillee
Jennilee Marigomen