Before the ash cloud

This is the rather great new video for Wildbirds & Peacedrums new single, 'Bleed Like There Was No Other Flood'. Filmed in Iceland and continuing the visual water theme started with the forthcoming EP, Retina, it's all rather hypnotic.

The song itself is relatively straight forward in the fact that it 'only' features a full choir, some clattering percussion and Mariam Wallentin's spooky vocals. It builds and evolves slowly into something quite beautiful.



Retina is out on 24 May.

Fight for this love

Wildbirds & Peacedrums are that odd thing; a band who make pretension sound uplifting as opposed to knuckle-chewingly awkward.

Having tackled steel drums, every kind of percussion available and cryptic lyrics about snakes, they've decided to throw choirs into their already burgeoning mix of sounds and will release two vinyl-only EPs (Retina and Iris) later this year before slapping them together for an album in August. As a taster for what to expect they're giving away a new song, 'Fight For Me', and it's one of the best things you'll hear all week.

You can download the track from here or listen to it on this widget thing we stole.

Manna from Heaven

Anyone familiar with Musick will know that we're quite big fans of all things Scandinavian. From Robyn to Lykke Li to Fever Ray to Wildbirds & Peacedrums to Roxette to Ace of Base (ahem). Well, add to that ever growing list another name- Manna. She looks like this:



Born in Paris, but now living in Finland, Manna makes the kind of music that Scandinavians seem to create in their sleep. 'Some Girls/Some Boys' is deliciously catchy, cloaked in melody and carries that magnetic quality that Scando-pop (no? No.) must have. First listen you think it's pretty good, then it reveals itself even more second time around and by the third listen you want to track Manna down and marry her. It's what LadyHawke would sound like if she weren't always seemingly half asleep.

Manna isn't on youtube yet, so click on her myspace instead.

While we're at it, here's another Scandinavian pop star by the name of Erik Hassle from Sweden. 'Hurtful' has been described by 'friend of the blog' Marina from Marina & The Diamonds as "really heartfelt cringe-pop"*, which sounds about right and is in no way a bad thing:



It's nice to see the girl from Annie still getting work too.

*Well, she was actually quoting someone else, so it is in fact a quote of a quote of a quote, so doesn't accurately reflect the opinions of Marina per se. Glad we cleared that up.