"Art" rock / "experimental" rock / "difficult to appreciate" rock

For today's post we're going to cover one of the biggest bands of last year and one of the biggest musicians of the past three decades - TV on the Radio and David Bowie, respectively.

TVOTR just released this cover version of one of Bowie's biggest songs.

TV on the Radio - Heroes (David Bowie Cover)



It's very, very well done. I would say it even approaches the level of the original, but, of course, Bowie fans would vehemently disagree.

David Bowie - Heroes



This song is being released as part of a charity compilation for War Child, which is "dedicated to providing urgently needed humanitarian assistance to war-affected children around the world," which is pretty cool. (Read more about the album here and here.) What's also cool is that Bowie chose TVOTR to cover this song.

For some background, TVOTR released one of the most widely-acclaimed albums of last year (even by MTV), which I have been excoriated for ignoring on our "Best of 2008" list. Personally, I found their music a little difficult to listen to - not as catchy relative to the hip-hop or pop that I generally appreciate. But I did like one song a heckuvalot.

TV on the Radio - Crying



TVOTR and Bowie have a history of collaborating as Bowie lent his vocals to a track on TVOTR's 2006 album Return to Cookie Mountain.

Finally, here's a cool widget that you can explore which has samples of more tracks off of the War Child benefit album.



P.S. Happy birthday, Rajiv. Also, remember when Bowie was in Labyrinth. That was hilariously bad.