In May Degrees released the EP “Pt III”, and also the predecessors, accordingly named “Pt II” and “Pt I”, was made available on the net.

Basically it’s about a warm, melodious electronica; synth pop with some strokes of indie with messy guitars. Degrees consists of the duo Mikael Jacobson and Rickard Folke, both hailing from the deep forests around Tranås, where they formed Degrees in 2008.

You can listen to their EP:s on their Bandcamp page and also visit them on their site. Here are two tracks from “Pt III”:

Can’t Walk Thru This Alone
Young & On the Run

My Closest Friend, hailing from Göteborg, released a singel in the end of May, “Air”. They offer two songs with rather different character. “Air” with a heavy post-grunge rock feeling and “Real Time”, lighter with some country vibes in it. I can’t help thinking of  R.E.M. as I listen, maybe to some extent because of the vocals.

It will be interesting to see what My Closest Friend will come up with next. You’ll find the band on Myspace and on Facebook. Here are the songs:

Air
Real Time

In November I wrote about The Open Up and Bleeds. Their debut album is now recorded and ready for launch, but so far there’s no date set for the release.

Of course you get a better view of a band when you can listen to an entire album, but it’s a little hard anyway to catch The Open Up and Bleeds. Makes it even more interesting for me, as I’m served a lot of variation from dirty, messy rock with a heavy drive in high speed, to slower, more tense and dark songs.

It’s The Stooges, Neil Young-rock, a rawer This Perfect Day and maybe some early The Cure too. As I said, it’s not available yet, but I really hope it will be soon. Meanwhile you can visit the band on their Myspace page and on Facebook. Here’s a song and also a video from the album:

This Noise

OK Is Not OK:

Others about The Open Up and Bleeds: Absolut Noise, Buck Theorem’s Hide-out

I’ve been praising Youth and Student Travel before, and their two earlier EP:s. Now they have released a new one, with the short name “YAST 3” and I just keep enjoying this band. Partly they change clothes in this EP, as every EP has it’s own sound. This one a little more rough, denser and more grand, but still a beautiful indie. A new thing is also that two of the songs are in Swedish. Here are two tracks:

Shine
Rätta till

You can read more and listen to YAST on their blog. On Spotify you can listen to the entire EP and on their Bandcamp page you can also listen to earlier releases.

Here’s a summer track with YAST – “Summertime”:

Orange Earth is the name of the next band. Maybe the band name tells us something of the psychadelia ambitions? And it feels a little psychadelic and a little garage and some indie and shoegaze. You can listen more to Orange Earth on their Facebook page or their Myspace page, where you also can download their EP “Lighthouse”.

Airless
From Noah