William Fitzsimmons.

Now here is someone who's music has just crept up on me in the most lovely way. William Fitzsimmons was one of those people who, every time one of his songs was played on my Last.fm Brown Bird Radio station, I'd almost always stop what I was doing to check who it was I was hearing. So, when I saw his name repeatedly noted in my ever present notebook for collecting just such names, naturally I took myself off to Spotify to have a proper listen. I quickly discovered that his songs have the ability it just rip my heart out in the best possible way. It was his album The Sparrow and the Crow that I first listened to and I was instantly hooked. It was Jay who pointed out that his voice is quite different to your usual singer/songwriter style of singing and I think this is one of the reasons why I love it.

Have a listen here to this acoustic version of one of my favourite songs.

He also has an EP called Derivatives which is a number of remixes of some of his songs,

 (and includes a rather sweet cover of I kissed A Girl!) 

and this song below which is a remix of the same song as above
zs and I confess is on a pretty regular loop here. 

Have a listen. 

You can hear more of his music here, including songs from his new album Gold In The Shadow, which so far sounds just a sweetly sublime as his previous work.

And of course he has the most impressive beard since David Lamb of Brown Bird!

Yeasayer.

Another band from NY, and while I don't have a lot of their music 

this favourite song of theirs is on many, many playlists of mine.

Ghost Bees.

Just adore these ladies.

Like Ms. Newsom's strange cousins that were found in the attic...

Freelance Whales.

Really loving this band from New York at the moment!