Bands To Discover

I have been recieving plenty of e-mails from bands and artists seeking exposure or from fans pointing me in their direction. I am happy to help out but I am getting so many these days that it's hard to dedicate a post to each and every one. So hopefully these bands don't mind a smaller push than the ones I normally give by rounding up some of them here.

First up are Starflower. This lot hail from Finland and their music is very reminiscent to shoegazing or the likes of rockier indie bands such as the Catherine Wheel. They have four tracks for downloading including the track How come the days seem so long? which I have enjoyed. A word of advice to the band. Tag your files properly or no-one is going to know who you are!

Face Parade have written to me before but their earlier e-mail must have been caught up in my spam filter. They write that "....We're a New York based band that has been compared to Pavement, The Velvet Undergroud, Broken Social Scene, and Modest Mouse." Their site is one of the best designed I have seen for a while and they have several mp3's for downloading. I gave "Sun For Everyone" and "Backfire on The Desert Shot" a listen and it has encouraged me to try and download some of their other tracks in future. Again another band that needs to tag their tracks correctly.

The Babylon Cowboys play a rockier sort of music compared to that I am normally used to listening to. Not my bag to be honest but you cannot help but be impressed by the vocalist's voice. It's incredibly strong. Judge for yourself on the track "Reflection".

The Blue Van have an annoying site designed in Flash. They are Danish and state that they make music inspired by the likes of The Small Faces, Cream and The Pretty Things. I downloaded a track from their new album "The Art Of Rolling". I can't link to it as you need to supply an e-mail address (let's hope they do away with that as it put's people off) but "Revelation Of Love" is what's described here in England as Pub Rock. That's not an offensive term by the way as it describes rock mixed with R&B, a bit like Dr Feelgood. Its enjoyable but easily forgettable as well.

I have saved the best (in my opinion anyway!) to last. Santa Dog hail from the west country in England and say that "....We're a new independent Bristol based band, female-fronted, heartfelt delicately fried guitar pop." And who am I to argue with that? They have made available a track called "Delicate", the title track of an EP release. It's a wondrous track and is very much in the vein of the Throwing Muses. Soon as I find out where the EP is sold it will be in my grasp. The site is very beautiful to gaze at - very 4AD-ish too!

Don't worry if you have e-mailed me and you have not been covered yet. Another round-up will take place soon.