Today's Music Obsession-Erato

If there's one thing the Swedes do even better than sporting Fair Isle sweaters and making it seem bearable to live in a nearly arctic climate, it's pop music (Yes, I'm looking at you Max Martin and ABBA).  It seems to be as much a part of their DNA as blue eyes and blond hair, but I usually forget about their pedigree in the bombardment of American artists.  In the last couple of days I've been listening to Passion Pit's newest release Gossamer pretty much on loop (because that's what you do when chained to working in a cubicle) and somewhere along the way, while vacillating between whether I preferred Love Is Greed to Hideaway, It's Not My Fault I'm Happy wanted in on the race and it turns out that Erato has done the backing vocals on some of the album.  Because acoustic/A Capella versions of songs are basically the Honey Pot to my whimsical Pooh Bear life, I went trundling down the Internet Superhighway to find out more.  Erato, it turns out, isn't a mispronunciation, or just the Greek muse, but is, in this instance, a female trio who has done some wonderful stripped down versions of songs that you think, "oh please, you have to keep the clothes on that song", like generally awful house music.  They've performed on the Swedish Grammys, and are slowly building their following outside Swedish borders, but still, bummingly, haven't recorded an album.

Here are the videos that I couldn't stop watching yesterday.  They've been making the rounds on Tumblr and Youtube too, but you should check the band out.  Maybe if there's enough buzz we can get something close to an EP to make the workdays go by faster:

THIS is all they have in Itunes as of right now

Swedish Grammy Performance:



Cover of Passion Pit's "It's Not My Fault I'm Happy"