Ones to Watch
Every weekday, discover the best in new, breakout and unsigned artists
In this Series
July 3, 2008 - Blind Pilot is the musical project of Portland, Ore. natives Ryan Dobrowski and Israel Nebeker. The two recorded their debut album, 3 Rounds and a Sound, after completing a tour that took them from Vancouver all the way to San Francisco — by bike. Nebeker says the group now plays as a nine-piece collective, but you would never know it from listening to 3 Rounds. The group offers a minimalist folk sound built on Nebeker's simple acoustic guitar and Dobrowski's sparse drumming.
Martin Dosh is a percussionist from Minneapolis, Minn., but his solo work is far from simple drum work. With Wolves and Wishes, Dosh's fourth full-length release on the Anticon label, Dosh has composed a series of richly orchestrated, mostly instrumental electronica tracks with a cinematic grandeur. With collaborative help from such well-known artists as Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Andrew Bird, the record finds a nice balance between Dosh's trippy synth, keyboard and drum work, and the album's guitars, violins, clarinets and saxophones.
Listen to the new album from the rock group, Derby and you'd swear they hail from Britain. The Portland, Ore.-based band draws heavily on BritPop and classic sounds of past British invasions on their latest CD — their second — Posters Fade. The influence of bands like The Beatles is impossible to miss, but the group leans more towards homage than imitation. The album stands as a catalog of Brit Rock stylings from the last forty years, all filtered through an American band looking back in awe.
A trio of guitarists powers Little Rock band American Princes — a presence made immediately known on the group's fourth full-length record, Other People. The band's catchy rock sound is built upon a thick bed of layered electric guitars in swirling stereo. With competing vocalists Collins Kilgore, David Slade, and William Boyd taking turns singing lead and the constantly battling instruments, the sound is more chaotic than that of your average rock group, but it all seems to work with the band's on-edge energy.
A band named for Shakespeare's character, Titus Andronicus is erratic, frenzied, and at times borderline psychotic. The group's debut album, The Airing of Grievances, meanders from blitzkrieg punk to lo-fi post-punk to psychedelic rock, while mixing in spoken-word renditions of some of the play's most dramatic lines.
The outfits worn in De Novo Dahl's band photos are ridiculous, cartoonish, and over-the-top, matching the group's music perfectly. The rock quintet plays powerful, energetic songs that are fun and catchy as well as quirky and tongue-in-cheek.
Jared Scott and Pete Sustarsic recorded In Cadeo's five-song self-titled EP as a studio project with help from friends before the band ever had a proper lineup. Given the grunge-pop sound of "The Archer," the anthemic piano-driven rock of "This Side The Grave" and the slow build-up and cathartic climax of "Communist Lecture," the band proves commanding despite its fledgling nature.
On his self-titled debut, Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson enlists all-star help in friends Chris Taylor and Chris Bear of Grizzly Bear and Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio. Yet despite recording with more accomplished rockers, Robinson has a style and flair all his own.
Setting Sun is a quintet led by frontman and producer Gary Levitt. The band's third album, Children of the Wild, evokes the laid-back simple life of Levitt's Upstate New York home. Driven by simple acoustic guitar lines, Erica Quitzow's graceful string orchestrations, and Levitt's hushed vocals, Setting Sun's arrangements are dramatic and poignant.
The name of the Nashville band Computer Vs. Banjo says it all: Johnny Mann and Beau Stapleton blend folky banjos and acoustic guitars with synth-heavy electronica and experimental beats. The computer tends to win the battle on the group's self-titled debut, but countless computerized samples of more traditional instruments give the record an eclectic, genre-bending sound.
Making solo, instrumental acoustic guitar work engaging outside of live performance is very difficult. Washington, DC guitarist Mike Meier manages to do so on his flamenco style classical guitar record, appropriately titled Acoustic Guitar, offering interesting and concise musical ideas through masterful fingerpicking. The highly intricate, live-recorded instrumental guitar work makes the record immediately enticing — at times captivating.
Ever since the huge success of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, bluegrass and soul have had a resurgence in popular music. Porland, OR duo the Old Believers yearn for the past with a nostalgic folk sound that is soulful and inspired. Singer Neeley Kempf's expressive bluesy croon is a throwback to ages long ago, and paired with the group's alt-country stylings, the music he produces with bandmate Keeley Boyle is both vivid and engaging.
Iceland's Mugison is the brainchild of one Örn Elías Guðmundsson. The mad genius concocts music that is as engaging as it is odd and eclectic, running the gamut from electronic trip-hop to guitar heavy arena rock to earnest acoustic singer-songwriter work.
The Austin-based instrumental quintet My Education composes wordless songs through vast, gorgeously orchestrated soundscapes. From squealing electric guitar wails to screeching viola yelps, the band's music has all the vocals it needs, drawing its narrative tension from ambient dischord.
Athens, GA band Mass Solo Revolt hasn't lost sight of its predecessors — Pavement, Built to Spill — harnessing those raw sounds from the early '90s to create a less polished, yet still infectious, throwback indie rock sound. The opening chords to the band's debut CD, Easy Mark could have been pulled straight off Pavement's Slanted and Enchanted, offering the same lazy, off-kilter sound. Lead singer Martin Brummeler's idiosyncratic lyrics about "crooked teeth" and "rubber knives" add to the song's quirky feel; the track proves uniquely poppy with catchy hooks.
