G4's "Attack of the Show" produced a segment on Kickstarter featuring a technology, product design and board game project, including Dash, the smart phone stereo for your car, the clever iPad and laptop sleeves from Wonder Threads and the Chicken Caesar board game from Nevermore Games."

This American Life interviewed Louis Ortiz, an Obama doppelganger and the subject of The Audacity of Louis Ortiz, a documentary project chronicling his transition from 2008 when he "lost his job and was playing in pool tournaments in The Bronx to scratch together some money," until one day when "a friend pointed out that Louis looked strikingly similar to a man who had been in the news: presidential candidate Barack Obama. And that's when everything started to change for Louis, in ways he could never have expected."

And last but not least, io9 featured the currently funding webseries project, The New Kind, "an anime-influenced series set in the post-human future," which they said "will leave your heart pounding and your brain wanting more."

Ad Hoc is a new music journalism entity set to break down the lines between different factions of the music world and celebrate sound as a community. We dig their mission and wanted to know a little bit more about the project, so we asked Emilie and Ric to make us a mix, and give us a little play-by-pay companion piece so we could familiarize ourselves with their realm. Hit play and dig in!

Julia Holter: “In The Same Room” There is not much I can say about “In The Same Room,” a track from Los Angeles composer Julia Holter’s forthcoming Ekstasis LP on RVNG Intl.. This one is built primarily from Julia’s own voice, with hits of harpsichord and lilting, pentatonic synth lines. Other than that, It’s just one of those songs that gets you from the very first spin, and I think it would be impossible to anatomize its beauty without going into some very boring specifics about why certain note combinations make us feel more alive. It’s not every day that a conservatory musician writes pop that blows everybody else out of the water, now is it? --Emilie Friedlander 

Black Dice: “Pigs” It’s fucking new Black Dice. Are you kidding me? --Ric Leichtung 

Evian Christ: “Fuck It None of Y’all Don’t Rap” UK-based producer Joshua Leary started dropping bombs on his YouTube account back in December, and just a couple weeks ago released his first mixtape, Kings and Them, via Tri Angle Records. The Mediafire download has it’s share of bangers and shows a pretty diverse palette of influences. Samples in “Thrown Like Jacks” sound straight out of Grouper’s Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, while “Go Girl” rips from the platinum-certified Far East Movement, but “Fuck It” is definitely the track that cuts the deepest. --Ric Leichtung 

Tezeo: “Friends” Ad Hoc contributing blog Dummy Mag just released this digital single from Brooklyn-based Tezeo a couple weeks back and it’s been in heavy rotation since. Produced by Blondes’ Sam Haar, Tezeo’s debut missive shows a more straightforward approach to songwriting than contemporaries Teengirl Fantasy, Gatekeeper, and Light Asylum. --Ric Leichtung 

Majical Cloudz & Grimes: “Song for Ric” Our favorite pair of Canadians hooked us up with an original collaborative track specially made for our Kickstarter comp and we couldn’t be more flattered. Extra huge special mega thanks to Arbutus and 4AD for making this one happen. --Ric Leichtung 

Tonstartssbandht: “Hymn Eola” 2011 saw a lot of great releases, but one of my personal favorites was Tonstartssbandht’s Hymn cassette. While the album got nods from a lot of the previous Altered Zones contributors like Chocolate Bobka, Friendship Bracelet, and Weekly Tape Deck, this band has managed to fly by a lot of people’s radars due to their incredibly difficult to spell name (for the record, it’s pronounced ton-starts-bandit), but know that this is one band that should not be overlooked. --Ric Leichtung

Copy City/Chill Pillars: “Jennifer” Still swooning over the sinister, rock-n-roll-from-the-crypt vibe of this post-punk trio from Lake Worth, Florida after first hearing their very gristly Held Hostage On Planet Chill album over the loudspeakers at a DIY show in Brooklyn last year. Full of sharp angles and economical to an extreme, “Jennifer” feels strangely older than it is, and reminds me that simplicity is what makes pop music pop. Cop City/Chill Pillars’ debut is out now on record label Florida’s Dying, which, in my view, couldn’t have a more appropriate name. --Emilie Friedlander 

Beach Fossils: “Alison (Slowdive Cover)” It’s not every day that a band covers one of your favorite songs, so needless to say we were beyond psyched when Beach Fossils submitted this standout from Slowdive’s Souvlaki. This one fits perfectly alongside Captured Tracks’ Shoegaze Archives re-issues project, so hopefully we’ll hear more CT artists rep the genre in the future... --Ric Leichtung 

Imbogodom: “Heir Looms” Considering how much I’ve been jamming their new And They Turned Not When They Went LP lately, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce Imbogodom’s name. What I do know about the duo of New Zealand’s Daniel Beban and Britian’s Alexander Tucker is that they compose primarily with analog tape loops, culling their source material from vox and instrumental samples they record themselves. “Heir Looms” showcases the folkier, less abstract side of this latest Thrill Jockey release and it’s hard to see say what moves me more: the dreamy beauty of the songcraft here, or the tape manipulations that spirit it away. --Emilie Friedlander

Demdike Stare: “Ishmael’s Intent” After dropping three records over the course of one year (2010), Manchester electronic duo Demdike Stare kicked off 2012 with yet another dip into the shadowy recesses of our collective musical subconscious. Elemental, out now on Modern Love, retained the sluggish beats and seamlessly arranged library music samples of the group’s inaugural Trilogy (reissued as such in 2011), but what we got was a single, monolithic statement spoken across four slabs of wax. The good news is that Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker are every bit as exacting as they are prolific, and the darkly percolating “Ishmael’s Intent,” a track from Elemental, is a case in point. Listen for that echoing pop at the end of each rhythmic phrase, or that woosh that sounds like an airplane flying overhead, and see if you can find a better word to describe them than “precise.” --Emilie Friedlander 

Mark McGuire & Charles Berlitz: “MR” There is something serendipitous about this collaboration between Emeralds guitarist Mark McGuire and Skaters member Spencer Clark (styled here as Charles Berlitz), and it’s not just that these two experimental all-stars started jamming in the first place; more, it’s the surprisingly unstoppable chemistry between Spencer’s rhythmic loop-de-loops and McGuire’s sprawling melodic lines. Named after Aussie surf legend Mark Richards, “MR” starts with some basic power chords and builds into roaring rip tide. Grip Inner Tube straight from Spencer Clark’s very own Pacific City Sound Visions imprint, and, to quote the tagline on the cover, “witness the revery of a mind filtered through tube...” --Emilie Friedlander

Raajmahal: “Celandine” Raajmahal is a new project made up of Pat Murano from No Neck Blues Band and Decimus, Carla Baker from Baby Yaga, and Santa Wolanczyk from Flower Orgy. Beautifully depressing ambient guitar work, creeping vocal chants, and contemplative, minimal synth make up Raajmahal’s deeply reflective aesthetic. “Celandine” is the title-track from their first full-length that just came out on Digitalis Limited, but watch out for a follow-up LP from Murano’s own Kelippah Records coming this Spring. --Ric Leichtung 

How To Dress Well: “Clowne Towne” HTDW’s Tom Krell recorded this mantric cover of Fabulous Muscles anthem “Clowne Towne” on the radio last year while touring in Australia. You won’t hear any of the strings, electronic bleeps, or industrial percussion of Xiu Xiu’s original, but Krell has a knack for making silence ring out equally loud. Jam it on our Kickstarter compilation. --Emilie Friedlander