annie dressner – east twenties.

New York singer-songwriter Annie Dressner took a coveted spot on my Spotify starred list at the end of 2012 when I listened to her debut album Strangers Who Knew Each Other’s Names. Since moving to the UK, Dressner has played many venues across the country, including the Cambridge Folk Festival and Secret Garden Party – with more festival dates to come this summer. Her website boasts praise from the likes of BBC 6 Music’s Tom Ravenscroft, amongst others, and from listening to her new EP East Twenties, it’s easy to see why.

an escape plan – living together.

Some time ago I wrote a post about finding brilliant tracks through their use in tv-shows and occasionally in adverts. Well, it’s happened again. Coming scarily close to overtaking their cats advert as my favourite IKEA advert ever (yes, I rank IKEA adverts separately from all other adverts), the Swedish flat-packed furniture people have put together a video that makes tidying-up look like the most emotional and heartfelt activity ever. It’s put together beautifully and soundtracked by the brilliant An Escape Plan.

sam page – breach.

Imagine, if you can, a university lecturer/college professor. Someone who had gained a PhD in Philosophy, taught for five years and then gave it all up to pursue a music career. Sam Page is that former Philosophy professor, but drop any preconceptions about his music style right there. His bio says that he “needed a break from being rational”, and from the sounds of his debut album Breach, that’s exactly what he’s done.

ellie goulding – halcyon.

I’ve been waiting for this album since probably last February when the singer suggested she hoped for a release before the end of 2011. But since then she’s been off getting over Greg James and hanging out with Skrillex in America. A year later than promised, Ellie’s second album, Halcyon, is due for release this week. 

kodaline.

If you’re a regular Radio 1 listener you might have heard this band being touted by the likes of Zane Lowe and Fearne Cotton of late. This was how I first heard them, tuned into Zane Lowe, driving a minibus full of rowdy seventeen-year-olds up the Welsh coastline and desperately trying to drown them out by cranking up the volume. And All I Want seemed to be the perfect track. It’s soothing and thoughtful and has that nice acousticy guitar quality that I’m so fond of. In many ways, it’d fit quite nicely in my current music selection (think Lucy Rose, Daughter, Mumford etc). For a number of reasons though, it’s not actually a good representation of the rest of their self-titled EP, which I’ll come to later. 

new music trailer.

Over the past week or so a number of announcements have made me incredibly excited for all of the new music we’re due at some point in the not-too-distant future. Excited and slightly concerned for my bank balance (the  £125 set to leave my bank account for Muse tickets is bittersweet). So, to let you all in on the fun, here’s my list of upcoming releases that you should all be looking forward to.

2:54

One of my biggest regrets about having a lot of work lately has been not being able to tell you about this band sooner. The most I could manage was a Twitter update a month or so ago. But the work is done, the sun is shining and I’m inside listening to 2:54. And I couldn’t be happier.

acoustic guitars and boys called ben.

Those of you who know me will be aware of the ongoing amusement that is the number of friends I have with the same name. I’ve genuinely lost track of the actual amount of “Chris”s (and a Kris) that I know. At the moment though, there are two “Ben”s that are getting most of my attention. There are a number of musicians called Ben that I love – Ben Gibbard, Ben Kweller, Ben Folds, to name but a few. For the past couple of weeks though, it’s all been about Benjamin Francis Leftwich and Ben Howard.

radiohead (+various) – TKOL RMX 1234567

Ah Radiohead. Not content with letting The King of Limbs settle into its own Radiohead-discography niche, they’ve now released a remix album from the likes of Jamie xx and Four Tet less than eight months after the release of the original. TKOL RMX 1234567 (try to avoid mentioning the Kings of Leon when talking about it, the similarities exist in acronyms alone) is a thoroughly engrossing listen.

the glastonbury series – admiral fallow.

Admiral Fallow were one of my highlights of Glastonbury and set the bar for my best day of the whole Festival. Considering we weren’t even planning to see them, that’s probably saying a lot. The band we were actually hoping to see that morning was Stornoway (who, incidentally, are named after a Scottish town but actually come from Oxford. Unlike Admiral Fallow, who are indeed Scottish).