Kaleo

I wanted to do a post on this band called Kaleo (Kah-lay-oh) because they are really some of the best musicians I've come across in a long time, and whilst they are gaining quite a lot of popularity, they're still relatively undiscovered to mainstream music, and I just couldn't keep them to myself and not share with anyone I could.

They have massive diversity in terms of genre, its actually kind of bizarre. The first song I heard by them was a really folky-indie sort of vibe, but then some of their other stuff is country-ish and then a lot of it is also very much rock and blues. So it's kind of weird to believe it's all from the same band, but I love every different genre they've taken on so far, and there's definitely something for everyone. Also, regardless of the type of music, the lead singer's voice is like absolute gold and is also just super different and really strong, which carries them through as a continuous band no matter the genre. There is some lovely guitaring and cool little riffs which I love, and then just a lot of interesting lyrics and just overall musicality. It's safe to say I'm pretty smitten with them, and I really do find that I don't get sick of their music, even though I have long overplayed a lot of their songs. And lastly, I also find they their music just genuinely makes me so happy, I often listen to it in study week or when I've had a long day and am sitting in traffic and it just immediately cheers me up in sheer appreciation of what wonderful music it is.

They are from Iceland, but I do believe they've recently moved to the US because they signed a record label in Texas. There are 4 members of the band, and yeah they are just really worth a listen.

Okay so let me start with what is definitely one of my all-time favourites, a song called All the Pretty Girls. I feel like if you like anything folky at all you will instantly fall in love with this song as much as I have. I heard it for the first time a while ago, maybe half way through 2015 and just immediately loved it- and the music video is really lovely too!

Okay the next one is another fav, ahh it's amazing. This one has a bit of a country-ish vibe to it, just slightly so, and has such a lovely melody.  I am a personal fan of the little guitar riff in the middle and the whistling at the end. It's called Automobile.

I also feel like to fully appreciate what wonderful musicians these guys are, you should listen to a couple of their live videos, because they sound practically identical to their recorded versions, which is always something commendable of a genuine band, who aren't completely distorted by the works of the recording studio. They really keep things simple and down to the basics of just making good music- here is a live version that I really like:

Another one I love is called Pour Sugar on Me- this has a bit of a more blues-y or jazzy sort of vibe.  I discovered this one a lot more recently and it's really so cool, very different to a lot of music out there at the moment.

Two others that are also really worth a listen are Way Down We Go and I Walk On Water.

Way Down We Go has become relatively well known cause it played on quite a few popular TV shows (I heard it on the recent Suits finale, and I think it's on Fifa'16 too), and I think it might have made a couple of charts too. It gets especially cool near the end where it becomes a bit more like grungy and just so cool, definitely worth a listen (also, they did a live version of this in a frikken volcano (!), which as you can imagine has incredible acoustics).

And then 'I Walk On Water' is another, more recent one. I must say at first I liked this a little less than the others, but after listening to it properly, there's a part sort of half way through the song where it changes up, to like a bridge or something, and it just adds so much to the song, and yeah, now I love it!

Another one I love- I Can't Go On Without You. This is my current sort of more newly discovered favourite. I love the whistling and change in tempo in the intro. 

And then another all time favourite is Broken Bones- I don't even really know how to describe this, but definitely has a bit of the more rock-y side of their music, and the electric lead guitar is so cool, just listen:

Okay, so now for some of their like full-on rock stuff.... I must say somehow, even though I don't usually listen to a lot of this sort of stuff, I find myself loving this stuff just as much as the rest of it! They sound very similar to The Black Keys in quite a few of the songs, so it's that sort of vibe.

Here are some of my favs: Pretty Boy Floyd, No Good and Fool (in that order). 

The electric guitar intro to this one is so cool!

Okay so now that I have literally shown you just about every song they've released, I hope that maybe their music will bring some of you as much happiness as it brings me. I am dying for them to put out a new album soon, as the songs I've shown you now are almost all of the ones they've released since they formed a while back, so I'm super excited for some new material that I'm sure is soon to come. 

Happy listening!