Daniel (Elias & the Wizzkids, Yamon Yamon) and Simon (The Third Try Club) form the duo Shpy, and a little while ago they released their debut EP “Springs”. And it’s a nice debut indeed; 4 songs of indie vibing pop, with an interesting sound, rather dreamy and melancholic.

They picked up the band name Shpy when they saw the the word Shpy on a ship in Dubrovnik. As they also like the sea they thought it would fit as a band name.

Listen to and download their EP on Shpy’s site. You can also follow them on Facebook.

Lated

The band BOA, hailing from Göteborg released their debut album “Forever and Never” about a month ago. The album starts with the earlier single “Push”, which has been out for a while and which is a real pop gem, so it was interesting how a whole album would sound, which direction they would take after the single.

And I think that they answered that with an impressive debut album, more varying that I would expect. It’s a pop album indeed, with nice melodies as it should be and that radiates brightness and lightness. There’s sparkling indie pop, more quite pieces, dreamy pop and songs with a more distinctive beat in the direction of electro pop. All the time with a good balance between the songs so that I feel I’m still in BOA-land, with well crafted songs containing a proper amount of unpredictability and the bright voice of the singer Orsi keeping it together nice. A good pop album simply put.

You can listen to the album on Spotify and part of it on their site. They have a Facebook page too of course. Here are two songs:

Push
Like Dust On Your Heart

Support the artist: Buy “Forever and Never” – on iTunes – on Amazon

The band Jet Link released a single in the beginning of October, with two songs as a first taste of the upcoming album. They have released a couple of EP:s since they started in 2009, but I haven’t listened to them before, so this was a nice new acquaintance..

The song “Foxes” is a really good song; uplifting rock that smells indie from far away, but still a nice pop construction in the bottom. Listen for yourself here below.

Listen more on Jet Link’s Bandcamp page, on Spotify or on their Facebook page.

Foxes

Support the artist: Buy Foxes/Leeroy – on Itunes – on Amazon

A couple of days ago Patrick Rydman released his second album, “What Took You So Long”. If the debut album, from 2008, mainly was a jazz album with pop influences, I’d say that it’s the other way around this time: a pop album with a jazzy feeling and lots of sould vibes. It varies more in style between the songs, but mostly i land in the seventies between Burt Bacharach, Stevie Wonder, Bill Withers and Billy Joel with a detour to Sting’s jazz pop on a couple of songs.

It feels like Patrick is perfectly at home in this music, and some songs feel almost like tributes to his predecessors, which all in all gives the album a pleasant, laidback atmosphere. The top moments for me are the more quiet songs, first of all in “Soldier Song”, where you come closer to Patrick.

You can find more info on Patrick Rydman’s site and on his Facebook page. Here’s the second single from the album:

I See You Crying

After being a member in several pop and rock acts during a period of time, Per Arvidson quit entirely with music in 1994, became a father of a couple of twins and started working as the director of the the radio station NRJ in Malmö. In 2004 he bought a synth for his kids which led to that he started writing songs again and eventually producing them. The story doesn’t say what happened to his kids’ interest for music.

In September he released the EP “When the War Comes On”, four pop songs with nice melodies. In a way it’s timeless classic pop in my ears, where I sometimes land in the seventies and sometimes in the more grand eighties in the vibes from the songs.

He’s planning another EP this year, and while you wait for that one you can listen to “When the War Comes On” on Spotify and watch video versions of the tracks on his Youtube channel. You can also find Arvidson on Facebook.

Fly Me a Baby