Better go get this now.

​If you want a one-URL "major" vs. "indie" battleground -- what defines and/or divides them, which lifestyle brand the discerning-legal-downloader demographic really prefers -- you could do far worse than eMusic, the excellent monthly-subscription MP3 service (which employs several of our colleagues and friends) that's both continually growing and continually enduring growing pains. The latter today, mostly: This week the site is adding 250,000 tracks (including the entire Universal Music Group catalog) but losing the mega-indie labels -- Matador, Merge, Domino -- that continually top its download charts.

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This accordian kills fascists. Photo by Kim Erlandsen.

​Though some of us here at SOTC may be somewhere between "agnostic" and "hater" when it comes to the all important subject of the Arcade Fire, there is one thing we can all agree on: it's been a hell of a week for the band's label, the venerable North Carolina-based Merge. They signed the Mountain Goats. They shipped promo copies of the forthcoming Superchunk record, Majesty Shredding, which is an album so good it almost defies description. And of course, The Suburbs topped Eminem's Recovery on the Billboard charts, giving the label its improbable third top ten record in 2010, after Spoon's Transference and She & Him's Volume 2. True to indie form, however, they're playing it nonchalant. As the label's co-founder (and Superchunk bassist) Laura Ballance told the L.A. Times yesterday: "The whole chart thing is kind of like sports." She went on to add: "The need to have a ranking is kind of meaningless. I'm more like, 'It did good? That's great.'"

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Farewell, 4AD logo

​North Carolina indie titan Merge is having a good week. Two days ago, the long-awaited third Arcade Fire record, The Suburbs, came out to tremendous acclaim, some consternation, and one hell of a New York show last night at MSG. And today, the label announced two new signings: the Mountain Goats, John Darnielle's long-running, completely beloved (by us, anyway) indie-folk outfit; and the Extra Lens, formerly known as the Extra Glenns, Darnielle's side project with the critic and songwriter Franklin Bruno. The latter have a new album, Undercard, on the way; the record's first single, "Only Existing Footage," is available at Pitchfork. There are a lot of convergences at work here: Darnielle lives in the same North Carolina town as Merge's Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance. Those two also perform as Superchunk (along with sometime Mountain Goats drummer Jon Wurster), and Darnielle sings backup on the band's incredible new record. Indie rock is a small town, and these people are all the mayors of it. Plus: one more reason to like the Arcade Fire! [Pitchfork]

After chatting backstage at the Village Voice Media SXSW party with Surfer Blood (who told us about their Twittering philosophy), and Pains of Being Pure at Heart (who recounted an innocently embarrassing incident involving a condom), we cornered Merge Records honchos/Superchunk leaders Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance to probe them about their best SXSW memories, an Austin club toilet that Mac doesn't miss, and what Superchunk's last show ever would be like. But they insist that such a thing will never happen--at least deliberately. That's good news, right?