Alt Altman aka Digits is definitely a man about town. After releasing his debut album (Hold It Close) in 2009, he has gone on to release a number of singles (grab them below at his website) and has also launched a very successful showcase/blog called Silent Shout. We asked him to curate the latest 7 Day Mixtape and the results are amazing. Be prepared for some musical goodness here folks. Download the mix below.

1. Owen Pallett – Don’t Stop
Heartland was a brilliant record and you should definitely check it out if you haven’t heard it already. But one of my favourite songs he put out that year wasn’t on that album: Don’t Stop, the last song on the Swedish Love Story EP. It’s the danciest Owen Pallett song I’ve heard, it’s got drum machines and plays up his Arthur Russell-ness. It’s amazing, and I hope that the reason it was tucked away on an EP is because he’s got an electronic album in the works that will include it. One can hope! Also: he and Caribou should collaborate on something, because they would sound amazing together. Given that he’s covered “Odessa” in concert it’s not impossible right?

2. Homo Duplex – Out of Touch
When I was a kid, I was really into East Coast indie rock bands and I stubbornly wouldn’t listen to a single thing that had a synthesizer in it (so it’s kind of funny that I make electronic pop music now). So it’s really cool to see that Ron Bates, one of the members old school Halifax indie rockers Orange Glass has a dark indie electronic project called Homo Duplex. Even more shocking to my teenage self, here they are covering Hall & Oates. My how times have changed. In those dark pre-Internet days, it was difficult to find out about bands, and to buy their records, and Orange Glass’s album took me months to track down back in the day. I still have a signed Orange Glass 7″!

3. Silly Kissers – You Could Even Like Me
Silly Kissers are my favourite new pop group in the country, and it’s kind of surprising they haven’t attracted more attention. You Could Even Like Me is the quickest to grab your attention, but believe it or not, Precious Necklace, the record they put out last year, has at least five other songs that are just as catchy and melodic. I was supposed to play a show with them in Montreal late last summer, but unfortunately they had to pull out (I ended up playing with another great Montreal band, Blue Hawaii, instead).

4. Jef Barbara – Wild Boys (Video Edit)
Continuing in a Montreal vein, Jef Barbara’s another of my favourite new artists. He put out his first album Contamination last year, and it’s so cool. He especially excels as a video artist, with a really great low-budget aesthetic. I love how anyone can make pop music now, that there are no taboos in the indie community against making catchy melodic stuff, as long as they’re doing it in a creative way. Wild Boys is one of the best songs I heard all last year and more people need to hear this – to me it already feels like a classic.

5. Nite Funk – Am I Gonna Make It
So this one is a collaboration between two LA artists, Nite Jewel and Dam-Funk. Nite Jewel is a hypnotic electronic dream pop artist who’s charting out new territory, and her entire catalogue is pure genius. Dam-Funk is a funk artist, I’ve only heard a few of his songs before, but don’t know his stuff so well. This song was commissioned by some media company of some kind, and it’s something they managed to write and record in a single day. Clearly the results were great, and I’ve been really glad to find out they’re going to be making more recordings, perhaps even a full-length, together.

6. Cosmetics – The Cries
Time to get evil. As far as Italo-inspired Canadian acts go, nobody can touch Cosmetics, who are from Vancouver. They’ve put out four songs, and all of them are amazing. I think there’s an album coming out soon. I really like the lyric “I’ve got the cries” – it seems to imply having some kind of horrible madness, but not one that prevents you from being awesome on a dancefloor. For some reason I get a bit of an Iggy Pop “Nightclubbing” feel from this.

7. Tim Blake – Lighthouse
I’ll take you back a bit for this last one. Tim Blake was a member of space-rock group Hawkwind and Canterbury rock band Gong. I don’t actually know all that much else about him, but it’s the last song on a compilation of French underground music called So Young But So Cold which is definitely worth tracking down. I love the spacey atmospherics, the cheesy “Captain’s Log,” and then the amazing lead vocal that only begins halfway through the song. Light the lasers in your heart for all the world to see. Also, best album cover ever here.