Spooky Black's group the Stand4rd issues its album for free

All the political pundits wondering why so few young voters turned out for yesterday's election might want to examine the download numbers for the Stand4rd's debut album.

One of Minnesota's most hotly anticipated debut albums of the year, "The Stand4rd" premiered Tuesday via Soundcloud – and the page includes a link to download the 11-song collection as a free zip file. The Stand4rd has yet to charge money for any of its songs, which has also been the m.o. of the group's resident YouTube sensation and do-rag advocate, St. Paul teen singer Spooky Black.

The downbeat, mellowicious, ultra-horny electro-rap quartet also features quirky but alluring Twin Cities rap star Allan Kingdom, Bobby Raps of the rowdy Audio Perm crew and versatile producer/beatmaker Psymun. They just played their first live show together as a foursome last weekend at the Amsterdam Bar & Hall ahead of a string of dates from Toronto to Los Angeles. Saturday's sold-out St. Paul show also happened to be 16-year-old lil' Spook's first official gig ever, and he was greeted by screaming teen girls. The Current's music blogger Andrea Swensson wrote in her review, "It didn't seem like the group had come from St. Paul at all, but had actually beamed down from outer space."

Tempo-wise, "The Stand4rd" rarely gets above slow-jamming make-out grooves, but it's hyper-loaded with many layers of overlapping vocals, atmospheric synth parts and all sorts of sonic do-dads and video-game-like noise effects. The one truly upbeat song, "Too Involved," is actually the album's strongest track (posted below). Twin Cities-reared enegineer/producer Doc McKinney, who has worked with Drake and Santigold and manages the Stand4rd, co-produced the record.

Hometown fans already have another chance to see the group: It just announced another local show Nov. 30 at the Varsity Theater ($15 tickets are on sale here). This time, fans should know all the songs.