What I'm Listening To: Fleet Foxes

To start off, some lyrics:

I was following the pack
all swallowed in their coats
with scarves of red tied ’round their throats
to keep their little heads
from fallin’ in the snow
And I turned ’round and there you go
And, Michael, you would fall
and turn the white snow red as strawberries
in the summertime
— Fleet Foxes, "White Winter Hymnal"

I feel like I'm the last person to discover the Fleet Foxes, considering they released an album and an EP this year. The last of those two released back in June. In the amorphous genre known as alternative, Fleet Foxes work is surprisingly lo-fi.

The Fleet Foxes two albums - the Sun Giant EP and their self-titled full length album - were rated jointly by Pitchfork Media as the best album of 2008. The song White Winter Hymnal is rated as the second best song of the year by them as well.

(Note - You can right click and download the song above and download it from Pitchfork, who is giving it away for free.)

Pitchfork's word isn't enough, considering how fickle they tend to be with good albums. It also tops best album lists for the Times of London, 11th on Rolling Stone's list, fifth on Spin Magazine's list, and topped Australia's Wireless Bollinger's list.

This proves one thing to me - the people who go over indie-pop and alternative music with a fine tooth comb really like Fleet Foxes. It also proves that they also seek out the most obscure and lo-fi bands they can find, but that discussion has been done already by a more famous blog.

The Fleet Foxes are worth checking out if you have a a taste for music that is a mix between folk and classical. Rating Fleet Foxes self-titled album as the best of the year might be overstating the band's talent, but there's a lot to look forward to from the Seattle-quintet if they keep on the same track they have set out ...

... oh, and I hope everyone had a merry Christmas.