Attention all Vampire Diaries and music fans: we’re giving away a Season One prize pack to one lucky person this week! So, if you thirst for vampire drama — and you dig Sky Ferreira’s new hit “Obsession” and Goldfrapp’s “We Radiate” — just follow the instructions below and that lucky person could be you.

ONE GRAND PRIZE WINNER:

• Receive Vampire Diaries: The Complete First Season DVD and the Original Television Soundtrack: The Vampire Diaries CD

HOW TO ENTER:

• Head to Idolator on Facebook and add us as a friend (if you aren’t already).
• Then tweet this message — I have an “Obsession” with ‘Vampire Diaries’! @idolator, give me the Season 1 prize CD/DVD prize pack http://bit.ly/aH9VFn
• Deadline to enter is Thursday, October 7 at 11:59pm. We’ll be contacting tentative winners via Facebook message on Friday morning (keep an eye on your inbox)!
• Then 1 winner will be selected at random on Friday, October 8.

Original Television Soundtrack: The Vampire Diaries serves up a biting mix of exclusive tracks unavailable elsewhere:

• “Stefan’s Theme” – Mike Suby
• “Running Up That Hill” – Placebo
• “Currency of Love” – Silversun Pickups
• “Hammock” – Howls
• “Sleep Alone (909s in the DarkTimes Mix)” – Bat for Lashes
• “Bloodstream (Vampire Diaries Remix)” – Stateless
• “We Radiate” – Goldfrapp
• “Obsession” – Sky Ferreira
• “Head Over Heels” – Digital Daggers
• “Down” – Jason Walker
• “Beauty of the Dark” – Mads Langer
• “Cut” – Plumb
• “All You Wanted” – Sounds Under Radio featuring Alison Sudol of A Fine Frenzy
• “The Fellowship” – Smashing Pumpkins
• “On Melancholy Hill (Feed Me Remix)” – Gorillaz
• “1864″ – Mike Suby

The Original Television Soundtrack: The Vampire Diaries, featuring the hit single “Obsession” by Sky Ferreira (below), is available now on preorder and everywhere October 12th

Vampire Diaries: The Complete First Season is available on Blu-ray™ and DVD now.

Bat For Lashes’ Two Suns, Florence & The Machine’s Lungs, and the self-titled debuts from Glasvegas and La Roux are among the nominees for the Barclaycard Mercury Prize, awarded annually to the best album from the United Kingdom or Ireland. While there are some glaring omissions as always (um, Micachu?????), digging around for videos by the nominees revealed a couple of new-to-me acts—the hip-hop artist Speech Debelle, the experimental jazz outfit Led Bib—who proved intriguing on first listen. (Oddsmakers currently have Lungs as the favorite.) The nominees, and representative videos, after the jump.


Bat for Lashes, Two Suns

Florence & The Machine, Lungs

Friendly Fires

Friendly Fires – “Skeleton Boy”


Glasvegas

Kasabian, West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum

La Roux

Led Bib, Sensible Shoes

Led Bib – “Squirrel Carnage”


Lisa Hannigan, Sea Sew

Speech Debelle, Speech Therapy

Sweet Billy Pilgrim, Twice Born Men

Sweet Billy Pilgrim – “Kalypso”


The Horrors, Primary Colours

The Horrors – “Sea Within A Sea”


The Invisible

(This video about the making of the album artwork was the only Invisible-specific clip that was directly related to this album, but this live performance sounds quite promising. The Invisible is a supergroup featuring members of Polar Bear, Hot Chip and Zongamin, and their album was produced by Matthew Herbert; they’re label/tourmates with Micachu, which almost lessens the sting of Jewellery not being nominated. Almost.)


Kasabian, Florence Lead Mercury Prize Nominations [Billboard]

The video for Bat For Lashes’ disco-ish “Pearl’s Dream” is a charmingly ramshackle affair, with Natasha Khan recreating the alternate solar system she normally inhabits on the stage of a small auditorium. She’s confronted by a blonde, shoulder-feather-free version of herself sitting in the audience, but manages to prevail over her less plumaged persona thanks to a very irritable wolf–and a pyro budget that was just big enough. [MySpace via ONTD]

Our look at the closing lines of the week’s biggest new-music reviews continues with a roundup of reactions to Two Suns, the second album by Bat For Lashes, which comes out in the U.S. today:

• “Pounding on pianos, cranking out delicate little click-clack beats and shivering through choruses with an ultraromantic soprano, Khan proves she’s a powerhouse under her billowy sleeves. She could be the next Kate Bush—or, at the very least, she could be Björk’s new spirit animal.” [Melissa Maerz, Rolling Stone]

• “However, there’s a creeping pop sensibility here-’Daniel’ sounds like a breathier take on Stevie Nicks’ most elegant compositions, and ‘Pearls Dream’ brings a Kate Bush drama to the dancefloor. An easy (if slightly front-loaded) listen that Khan performs effortlessly.” [Jeff Leven, Paste]

• “Although undeniably beguiling in mood, Two Suns can occasionally feel unsubstantial. Yet it’s a broadly impressive album, though not, perhaps, the wholly compelling one Khan will surely one day make.” [Alex Ogg, The Quietus]

• “Khan is a fantastic package and a good, if not as maverick as some believe, songwriter. In a year when no one wants to sing about making a cup of tea, she’s just the ticket.” [Johnny Davis, Observer]

The second album from Natasha Khan—who d.b.a. Bat For Lashes—comes out in two months, and if the advance news of its Scott Walker cameo didn’t make me excited enough, its leadoff track “Glass” has me feeling kinda ravenous. Khan’s imperious voice lords over a dreary, yet grand landscape of bells, lighter-than-air keyboard lines, and glittering guitars; the outro, in which she wails over thundering drums, sounds like a battle cry. [Pitchfork]

As evidenced by the Bat For Lashes song at No. 28, which combines Wall Of Sound drums and girl-group choruses with a real-time description of falling out of love.

I first heard–and really, really liked–Bat For Lashes’ Fur And Gold in late 2006, but for whatever reason “What’s A Girl To Do?,” Natasha Khan’s chronicle of a woman’s waning romantic feelings for her lover, didn’t really blossom in my mind until mid-2007. The video, in which Khan and a bunch of furries go all BMX, probably helped, although not because of the ickle bunnies; for me, the video succeeded because it lifted “Girl” out of the context of the album, revealing its perfect inversion of the girl-group formula. Like many songs from that era, “Girl” possesses an overall feeling of longing, but it’s different than the sadness that emanates from being rejected; instead, the minor-key “Girl,” and its windblown backing choruses, capture the slow dread that creeps over a person when they’re spurning someone who they do, deep down, care for.

Also, I feel like I would be doing all of you a disservice if I didn’t post the oddest fan-made video I’ve found for any song on my year-end list:

Tragic, ain’t it? And I’m not just talking about the plot.

Bat For Lashes – What’s A Girl To Do [YouTube]
Bat For Lashes [MySpace]
Idolator’s 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

Bat For Lashes’ clip for “What’s A Girl To Do?” is one of my favorite videos of the year so far–how can you be immune to the charms of a one-take movie that’s completely focused on mask-wearing bike riders executing jumps in unison?–and Paper Thin Walls has a chat with the clip’s director, Dougal Wilson, up today. Fun fact: Donnie Darko wasn’t the only movie that inspired the video; that honor can be shared by the closing scene of E.T. and The Wicker Man. Let’s just hope it was the original, because while it’s a terrible, terrible movie, that punch-drunk remake with Nicolas Cage somehow managed to be worse.

Rabbit In Your Fill Light [Paper Thin Walls]
What’s A Girl To Do? [YouTube]

We’re probably the 10,000th music blog to link to this live Bat For Lashes session on Morning Becomes Eclectic, but Natasha Khan is a pretty stunning artist, and I’m still kicking myself for missing her show last week, so this will have to suffice. [Morning Becomes Eclectic]