Super Mario Bros. Theme Goes A Capella

By Ryan Bort at 12:15 PM on September 28, 2012

Classic video games, particularly Super Mario Bros., are well-worn subjects for YouTubers, Redditors and anyone else looking to create a viral pop culture parody. Instead of layering “Call Me Maybe” on top of their favorite old school video game, however, Julien Neel and Nick McKaig decided to recreate its soundtrack by replacing its recognizable sequences of beeps and boops with their own voices....  read more

Found in: Blogs, Awesome of the Day

Panda Bear Announces Tomboy Box Set, More Tour Dates

By John Barrett at 12:40 PM on August 23, 2011

Animal Collective member Noah Lennox, commonly known as Panda Bear, released _Tomboy_ earlier this year to a healthy level of critical acclaim. Now he's rolling out the deluxe vinyl edition of his sophomore effort.  read more

Found in: Concerts, News

Elizabeth Banks Producing A Capella Comedy

By Caitlin Peterkin at 5:20 PM on July 5, 2011

Universal Pictures has acquired the distribution rights to a new project from Gold Circle Films called Pitch Perfect, Variety reports....  read more

Found in: TV, News

Make It, Work It, Do It: College A Capella Gets Viral

By Rachael Maddux, illustration by Justin Renteria at 11:50 AM on August 28, 2008

Once a semester, 600 or so students pile into an auditorium at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., for a last-day-of-class concert by The Singing Knights, one of the school's seven a capella groups. With Carleton's student body barely clearing 2,000, that's an impressive crowd—until you consider that their live renditions of songs by Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens and other indie-rock darlings have racked up over 4 million YouTube views. Their 2006 performance of Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" is the unequivocal "hit" with 3,135,148 views at press time, but more recent arrangements of Flight of the Conchords' "Sello Tape"...  read more

Found in: Culture, Features

The Best of Online College A Capella

By Rachael Maddux at 2:12 PM on August 12, 2008

Thanks to the viral spread of videos of their performances of popular indie songs, Carleton College's Singing Knights are undoubtedly the Internet's most well-known college a capella group. But a slew of other ensembles have used YouTube to foster new audiences beyond the limited notoriety of campus showcases. And while no one's yet topped the Knights' live collaboration on Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" with "the Daft Hands guy" (also a Carleton student), there's no shortage of groups offering up videos of their unexpected, creative and, more often than not, mega-ironic arrangements. Here are six of our favorites. The...  read more

Found in: Culture, Features

Daft Fame: More from the Carleton Singing Knights

By Rachael Maddux, photo courtesy of the Carleton Singing Knights at 11:40 AM on August 12, 2008

In Issue 46, Tom Fry, Carleton senior and Singing Knights tenor, gave Paste a glimpse at the inner workings of the Internet's most popular college a capella ensemble. Here are some outtakes.On song selection: “It's a pretty democratic system: Each term, we all bring three or four songs to the table, and once everyone listens to them, we discuss which ones we'll sing and who should do the arranging. Democratic doesn't necessarily mean efficient-- this process usually takes a good 3-4 hour chunk out of our rehearsal time at the start of every term. Some of us are pretty picky.”...  read more

Found in: Culture, Features