XL Recordings

Swedish chanteuses El Perro del Mar and Lykke Li were on tour together recently, and they found time in their San Francisco stop to do a joint installment of La Blogothèque's "Take Away Show". The highlight is "Dance Dance Dance", a ramshackle, Shakira-referencing indie-pop tune from Li's Björn Yttling-produced Youth Novels; it's introduced here by a snippet of the guitar from Vampire Weekend's "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa", which Li played live at Roskilde. Over off-kilter percussion and acoustic instrumentation that really isn't so far off from the Youth Novels version, Li somehow makes her small voice huge, then fills in on kazoo for the studio take's saxophone solo. Elsewhere, Li lends backing vocals and handclaps to a chiming, windswept rendition of El Perro del Mar's mournful "Someone's Baby" (not a Jackson Browne cover), and the two singers duet on a similarly forlorn rendition of Wendy Rene's 1964 Stax single "After Laughter".

Lykke Li [ft. El Perro del Mar]: "Dance Dance Dance"