In the past few days I’ve been on an alternative/indie kick with folksy artists.  These are just two that stood out, and why I believe they are names to remember.

Dry the River is a group that stylistically falls somewhere between Fleet Foxes and My Morning Jacket.  The rough vocals mesh well with crunching guitars, contrasted with violin and folk-like percussion.  Don’t be mislead – some enthusiasts might be tempted to think of Yellowcard when they read the words “crunching guitars contrasted with violin” but that’s not the case here.  Take for example their song “New Ceremony”, the video for which can be veiwed below:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCJ22QQTWtM]

Dry the River, based in East London, England have been turning many heads with their captivating live shows and will be making a number of festival appearances this summer, culminating in an appearance at Austin City Limits in October.

My second pick for this post comes by way of the elite blog Pitchfork.  Despite their somewhat curmudgeonly elitism (or their reputation for being this way) I decided to actually explore their top picks.  Mount Eerie’s Clear Moon is currently their first album in the new music section.  A logical place to start.

Whoa. This stuff is beautiful!  The album sounds like you would expect it to from the name – slightly eerie and ethereal, but mostly peaceful.  Peaceful doesn’t mean sleep-inducing (though this characteristic isn’t always a bad thing) as the brainchild behind the project, Phil Elverum is a multi-instrumentalist.  The extremely well-versed in music might recognize the name as being associated with defunct act The Microphones.  “The Place Lives” and “The Place I Live” are particularly captivating, off the new Clear Moon LP.

Here’s “House Shape”:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/44562630″ iframe=”true” /]

Listen and see if you agree with me about this project’s potential.  Let’s hope Phil can manage to break away from just being an obscure Pitchfork band with this album.  With the recent success of Bon Iver, Youth Lagoon, and Bear in Heaven, he may be poised to do so.