The lovely coming of age video for Thea and the Wild’s track, Cry Sometimes is something that most indie kids that grew up in the early noughties can relate to. I’m sure most of us have gotten involved with a bottle of lurid hair dye and a light sabre at some point. Perhaps less of us a rifle and a skeleton onsie but you see where I’m coming from.

The rather gorgeous Thea herself was born and raised in Oslo to a hippie mum and a Swedish prog rocker Dad so it’s easy to see how it might be a little applicable to the enigmatic frontwoman too.

This darker brand of pop sees a marked progression from her folkier Norma Sass origins. Now with new band ‘The Wild’ Cry Sometimes sees brooding guitars and lyrical organs accompanying a mighty fine chorus line that begs a singalong.

Already breeding popularity in their homeland of Norway, it will be interesting to see how Thea and the Wild make their inevitable mark here in the UK in the midst of all the great new pop acts we’re seeing at the moment.

Emma

Football, feeling sick and arguing with your family after spending a little more time with them than you would normally be able to endure. Boxing day has traditionally been a pain in the arse - unless you like football. Well, now at least we have an anthem for it.

Dark Horses are from Seagull City - I think someone’s taking the piss?! They’re grotesquely large - not in the rotund Boxing Day sense of the word, there’s loads of them - they’re a sept-piece? a septemble? there’s seven of them - who knows what you call it. They’re good anyway.

Ian

Plenty of people are sure to compare Mariam The Believer to The Gossip. It’s all in the frantic drumbeat and powerful, echoey vocals. But instead of developing into something like one of The Gossips strong pop anthems, Mariam does a number on us with this track, Invisible Giving and switches suddenly into worldbeats tinged electronica and doesn’t stop there.

We’re taken on a strange journey through textured sounds, experimental vocals and ever-changing tempos with that jittery steam-train drumbeat chugging away throughout. Somehow, it works and Invisible Giving is born, leaving us with a lasting impression of, ‘What the fuck was that? Did I like that? I’m going to have to listen to that again!’

Mariam The Believer is one part of dark percussion outfit Wild Birds and Peace Drums- a fantastic live spectacle should you ever get chance to check them out. She hails from beautiful Scandinavia, a part of the world well known for spewing out the brain achingly cool and the bat-shit weird. If Mariam is anything to go by then long may it continue.

Emma

Tea Leigh has one of those voices that immediately makes you go all melty at the knees. Particularly with her latest track, Rushing In which makes you think of mellow days sitting on a porch in Alabama waitin’ for your man to come home to you all reekin’ of whisky.

She’s not from Alabama incidentally, Tea Leigh hails from Brooklyn, NYC which is where she’ll be playing her next gig on the 15th of June at Pianos.

Check out Tea Leigh’s Facebook page for a mushy picture of a foal and a teddy-bear- that’s pretty much how we feel about Rushing In. It’s a little bit too cute but we kinda love that about it. With deliciously soulful vocals, gentle acoustic guitar that develops into twangy banjo and delicate bells, it’s very easy to immerse yourself in it’s lovely dream-folk melody for a few minutes.

Sadly for us Brits, Miss Leigh has no plans to come over to the UK yet so unless you’re willing to jump on a plane this Saturday you’ll have to content yourself with purchasing her lovely album over on bandcamp.

Emma

We’ve been banging on about Glasgow for a while on this blog and for very good reason. Relentlessly, the city has provided many of the finest new acts of the past year. As to exactly why the bands that hail from that city are so particularly good, who knows, but long may it continue.

Prides follow in the mould of the city’s most successful recent act, CHVRCHES, yet add their own style and verve into the mix. Their debut brings us huge electro-pop sounds set off with the kind of self assured vocals of a band much more experienced. Big things await, mark our words.

Ian

It’s slim pickings to find a good gig on a Saturday night in London. Particularly when pretty much every Northerner in town is swaggering up to Finsbury Park to reminisce about the drugs scene of the 90’s and watch The Stone Roses.

The Fat White Family at the Sebright Arms are pretty much as good an alternative as you’re going to get. Skinny, fucked and a bit ill-looking they’ve inherently got the air of rockstars and like any good rockband- or the Seven Dwarfs and the Spice Girls- they each have their own alter ego to boot.

There’s the Madchester Chef, Dr Smack (lead guitar), the Camp Trucker (keys), Muttonchops (guitar), Deflated Hasslehoff (bass) and the Clammy White Kid (drums). Go see them- you’ll see exactly what I mean.

The Madchester Chef, who is frontman Lias, dances and quite often sings like a thinner, younger and generally less repulsive version of Sean Ryder. He’s half naked bar a pair of filthy Chef’s pants but it would seem we’re lucky to see him with clothes on at all. Pop the band’s name into Google Images and you’ll see a lot more from the Chef than you bargained for.

Visually, these guys are pretty much any journo’s wet dream, right down to their mad looking manager, Robert Rubbish and the guy who fancies himself as Pete Doherty who’s clearly their biggest fan, dancing down at the front. Dr Smack is the living incarnation of Murdoch from Gorrilaz, Deflated Hasslehoff reminds me of the clean one from Trainspotting, I could go on and on about how they look and how they act but it turns out that their music is not bad either.

The Fat Whites started life as a country band and in tracks like Bomb Disneyland they do have a country edge with jangly guitar and a redneck style drawl only way more lo-fi and a whole lot more weird. It certainly explains why two old guys wearing cowboy hats and faux swede have turned up to watch them anyway.

The other thing about the Fat Whites is that they’re essentially anti-establishment, which is pretty odd for a country band in itself being essentially the staple genre choice of middle America.

Heaven on Earth sees Lias adopt a higher psych-punk style vocal, it’s surfier, less country and entering psychobilly territory. Throughout the set and particularly on these slightly more chaotic numbers, there’s an infectious energy and the sense that you’re seeing something special and a bit out of the ordinary.

Whichever way you look at it, musically or visually, The Fat White Family are an interesting and exciting affair. As experimental and energetic a band you’ll see in a long time, it’s unlikely you’re ever going to hear these guys on Radio One or see them sell out anything bigger than a basement pub venue. But if you get chance to see them, make sure that you do, it’ll be the best Saturday night gig decision you make in a long time.

4/5

Emma