Team Me play warm and rich orchestrated pop music in the same vein as Sufjan Stevens, Efterklang, Patrick Wolf or Jónsi. This used to be Marius D. Hagen's one-man band - a recording project where he could play the songs that didn't fit in his other bands. But Team Me has grown into a six-strong orchestra and the fragile acoustic songs Hagen used to play have been transformed into a much larger and richer sound.
Woodkid will undoubtedly be the first surprise of 2011. An unexpected arrival far from the manufactured buzz.
The young man, aged 28, has come with an EP of raw beauty, Iron. Woodkid is Yoann Lemoine, previously known for his career as a video director without fault (Yelle, Moby, and more recently Katy Perry for "Teenage Dream"). The legend says that on a shoot in the USA, Woodkid received, straight from the hands of great American guitarist Richie Havens, a banjo that immediately replaced his piano, at least for a while.
Clare and the Reasons call Brooklyn home, but after touring around the world extensively for their first two albums with Van Dyke Parks, My Brightest Diamond, and on their own, they needed a new setting – one that would make them see and hear differently. For 8 months in 2011 they lived in an apartment on Berlin’s Bergstrasse, on the western edges of what used to be the East. They got a 1968 Schwalbe moped – model KR-51 – and sped around the city at a velocity the congested New York streets would have prohibited.
Julia Shammas Holter is a classically-trained keytarist from Echo Park. After infiltrating Human Ear Music headquarters dressed as an intern, she wrote and recorded her own release on the label. Her music is witty, surreal and optimistic. She plays without sarcasm in the terrains that divide sentimentality, passion, and control. Her songs are written instinctively, and treated with an off-kilter fastidiousness, working orchestral variety from minimal instrumentation.
Bad Veins is an indie rock duo from Cincinnati, Ohio, composed of Benjamin Davis and Sebastien Schultz. The band released their debut self-titled album on Dangerbird Records. Davis primarily writes the music, plays guitar and keyboard, and sings, while also recording backtracking music on a reel-to-reel tape player, nicknamed Irene. Schultz plays the drums. Davis also uses a megaphone and telephone to sing into, producing an unique sound.
Andrew Morgan's eponymous sophomore album picks up where dreaming debut "Misadventures in Radiology" leaves off. The second installment in the Kansas City-born songwriter's "Exile Trilogy," "Andrew Morgan" evokes cornerstone chamber pop albums like The Zombies' "Odessey & Oracle" and Badly Drawn Boy's "The Hour of the Bewilderbeast," yet bears a scope of arrangement and diversity of instrumentation all its own.
Charlyn Marie Marshall, also known as Chan (pronounced "Shawn") Marshall, was born in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. on 21 January 1972. After dropping out of high school, she started performing under the name Cat Power, while in Atlanta, backed by musicians Glen Thrasher, Mark Moore, and others. She soon moved to New York City, United States in 1992, then later opening for Liz Phair in 1994, she met Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth and Tim Foljahn of Two Dollar Guitar, who encouraged her to record, and played on her first two albums, 1995's Dear Sir and 1996's Myra Lee.
Baby Dee (born 1953) is best known in New York as the badly angelic, Shirley Temple obsessed, high riding cat that ruled the streets of lower Manhattan in the nineties. Her quest for adventure and little fishies led her to become the bilateral hermaphrodite of The Coney Island Side Show and The Kamikaze Freak Show in Europe.
Michael Musto calls her "a fabulous accordionist" and "ingenious harpist". Time Out calls her "the nightclub sensation". The LA Times calls her "hilariously bawdy".
Neil Hannon (born November 7, 1970) is a singer and songwriter, best known as the creator and lead member of the orchestral pop group The Divine Comedy. The band's official website even goes so far as to say, "The Divine Comedy is Neil Hannon," and Hannon is quoted in an interview as saying, "The Divine Comedy will always be my band because... I thought of it first!" In 2005 he contributed vocals to his long-time collaborator Joby Talbot's soundtrack for the movie version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.