Indie Rock Four Play

Here are songs from records that have been getting blogged about quite a bit over the last few months and now it's my turn. They all traffic in quirky, leftfield indie rock and pop that is "off the beaten path".

Guillemots - Made Up Love Song #43
This Brit 4 piece, named after a sea cliff dwelling bird, are all over the map stylistically. Here it's a woozy, over the top song with creaky keys and orchestral samples that devolves into psychedelic sea shanty. From the great little EP From The Cliffs.

Field Music - Pieces
These lads are from Sunderland in the UK and are friends of The Futureheads and Maximo Park. They are a more pastoral version of those bands. Let me use an XTC analogy - Futureheads and Maximo are the XTC of Drums And Wires and Black Sea, where these guys are the XTC of English Settlement & Skylarking - earthier and organic, less new wave more English folk. This is from their self titled debut, which is full of lovely, low key pop songs like this.

Islands - Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby
From the ashes of The Unicorns come Islands. What you got with the Unicorns is what you get here - psych pop, rap, folk and tweepop all fit in somewhere. I love this title and it is a cool little shuffle of a song.

Pretty Girls Make Graves - Domino
Post-punkers lose a guitarist and gain a keyboardist. Their new songs are reinvigorated and fuller sounding, with more diversity. And they rock just as hard as before. I was very pleasantly surprised by the band's latest LP Elan Vital, and it has slowly been creeping into a more regular rotation. I dig it.