The duo A Swarm of the Sun, Erik Nilsson and Jakob Berglund, released their debut album “Zenith” the 30th of August. Influenced by bands like Mogwai, M83, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Logh and Cult of Luna, they paint a dark, suggestive and beautiful sound landscape.

I can’t help thinking about Pink Floyd as they build up the songs from low-voiced melodies and feelings up to grand, powerful sceneries. A real album with ideas behind it and an interesting journey from the beginning to the end.

You can find A Swarm of the Sun on their site, on Facebook or on Myspace. “Zenith” is also available on Spotify.

Here are two songs:

Lifeline
This One Has No Heart

The artist Olof Svenblad calls himself Teleskop when he turns on his synths and produces a pop-electronica with some retro vibes.

TELESKOP may sound like as when you have been spending too much time thinking about the depths of the universe and have a hard time letting the thoughts go away, and at the same time you miss someone you like very much and it’s summer, a warm and fantastic summer and it’s in the middle of the night or early in the morning because the sky is not black but red, pink orange, blue and turquoise.
(translated from Swedish)

You can find Teleskop on Myspace. Here are two songs:

Anything
Horrible

The last couple of days I’ve been enjoying Hillström & Billy’s second full length album, “Outtakes and Remakes of Heartaches, which was released in July. It’s a record that has grown stronger and stronger everytime I’ve listened to it, and keeps doing so. If the debut album was good, this follow-up is brilliant.

The base is a nice retro-seventies sound from where he explores some soul, classic 70s-rock, ballads, 80’s pop and modern indie and more. The beatlesque feeling is there, 10 cc’s playfulness, grandness side by side with nakedness and a whole bunch of great melodies.

On the album members from Perssons pack, Hovet and Diamond Dogs participates. It’s only released on vinyl and also on the net of course.

You’ll find Hillström & Billy on his site and you can listen to the album on Spotify

It was hard to choose a couple of songs for this post, since all of them are great songs and have their own character, but in the end I selected these two:

What Times Become
It’s Over

A band that really caught my attention in the beginning of this year was Class of Kill’em High. And I’m happy to say that they continue to produce great stuff, now recently with two new songs on the singel “MotoBike”.

They’re in the same style as before and i really think that the band and Markus Pallof’s voice have that little extra that makes them stand out among other bands in the same genre.

Class of Kill’em High has a site now, where you can follow them.

Death Is Forever

Poor Sap:

A priest’s daughter born in Mexico, brought up in Lit 20 km from Östersund, now living on Gotland, a municipal official specialized on the EU, a mother and now also a rock star… That’s how I’m On TV, or Sofia Nordström, presents herself.

She’s recently released the three-track debut EP, “Efforts Made” and later this fall the debut album “Plastic Paradise”, will be released.

They say it’s Popsicle meets Bangles which is a very good description of how it feels. On the recordings she gets help from Kristofer Åström and Annika Norlin.

You’ll find I’m on TV on her site and you can also listen to “Efforts Made” on Spotify.

Efforts Made

Efforts Made: