New Music: Crystal Skulls, Run Chico Run, Nicolai Dunger, Peter Walker, Envelopes and Pela

An upcoming release to make note of is from Suicide Squeeze artist, Crystal Skulls. Titled, Outgoing Behavior, it shows just how a band name doesn't necessarily connote how the band will sound. Crystal Skulls sounds like a spin off from Queens of the Stone Age, when the band is squarely in the indie pop camp.

+ the cosmic door
+ baby boy

*******

Run Chico Run are another Canadian band. Yep. Another one. And yes, oh yes... another good one. With the recent release of their fifth full length, Slow Action [Boompa Records], the duo of Thomas Shields and Matt Skillings continue to deliver premium music without the public acclaim due them.

+ clockwork crows

*******

Nicolai Dunger is the type of singer that strikes a chord with the listener, or doesn't. His reach for the soulful seems almost forced at times, his voice an uncommon mix of Van Morrison and Ryan Adams, in fact his music is also a blend of what those two artists have delivered to listeners in the past. Dunger's latest release, Here's My Song..., is aided by a collaboration, musically and production wise, with the critic's darling band, Mercury Rev. But, oddly, I find this song growing on me.

+ hunger

*******

Peter Walker has production help on his new album, Young Gravity, supplied by Jim Fairchild of Grandaddy and Aaron Espinoza of Earlimart. And from the pedigree of these two producers you pretty much know what to expect from Walker's music, just that it's better than you expect.

+ what do I know
+ 39 stars
+ young gravity

*******

Envelopes come to us from Sweden and they come bearing the correct postage (ha, ha, ha... oh, shoot me). Just released is the album Demon with these songs standing out from the others.

+ audrey in the country
+ sister in love + isabelle and leonard

*******

Pela have been featured here on *sixeyes in the past and have just made a new track available on their website. And it, of course, soars with the piercing voice of Billy McCarthy. It's the kind of voice that could take a band to U2 heights of fame and glory.

+ lost to the lonesome
+ tenement teeth