win a 7″ made of ice from the shout out louds

Merge Records and the Shout Out Louds are giving away one of ten limited-edition kits for making a 7″ out of ice to celebrate the release of the band’s new track “Blue Ice”.

Everything about this project is crazy and we love it. It’s insanely easy to enter:

1. Send an email to merge@mergerecords.com
2. Make the subject of your email “Blue Ice Giveaway”
3. In the body enter your mailing address

A full-length from the Shout Out Louds will be available next year, but for now you can listen to “Blue Ice” below.

alternative hero winners!

For the second half of December, we held a contest with Knopf to give away copies of Tim Thornton‘s The Alternative Hero. Tim had been kind enough to make us a mixtape, and it serves as a companion to the book. People could enter by commenting and/or retweeting contest messages on Twitter. Here are the four lucky winners!

For Twitter, each RT got an entry, competing for one book. I put all the retweets in a list, then randomized it at www.random.org. Then, the winner was picked using the integer generator:

Congrats, @tylerlawman!

At M|H, each individual comment got an entry. They too went in a list and got randomized, then I had the integer generator pick three:

Hooray for Rick, Lindsay, and Matt!

To sweeten the deal, I promised one winner a yet-to-be-posted mixtape. Same deal, random list, integer winner:

Lindsay is our grand prize winner!

I’ll be contacting winners to coordinate getting them their prizes. Thanks to all who entered, and be sure to check out The Alternative Hero even if you didn’t win!

win an ipod nano from the boat people!

The Boat People want to give you an iPod Nano pre-loaded with their latest release, Chandeliers. Watch the video below, identify as many bands referenced as possible, then go here to get all the details and fill out the entry form.

Even if you don’t want to enter the contest, give the video a watch and play for fun.