Elliot & The Ghost, Joe & Soo, Junk Boys, Rosy Street

Elliot & The Ghost came together in 2013 in New York City. Having Recently departed from Austin's teen outfit The Steps, singer William Thompson met drummer Dan Edwards, guitarist Brett Giroux, and bassist Connor Jones. The band's very first performances were held in old Brooklyn loft spaces and scuzzy dives. Within a year's time the group was invited as direct support for alongside Weezer, and has since shared the stage B.B. King, The Chain Gang of 1974, amongst many others.

The band released their debut EP 'Is This Love' in early 2014. The 5-song set was recorded in the bowels of Brooklyn in a cramped basement apartment. Their limited budget required the band to get creative, mic'ing a staircase to capture percussion, and convincing two clowns from the passing Ringling Brothers circus to contribute trumpet and trombone, all the while, having to stop every 5 minutes to allow the rumbling trains to pass by. Artist Direct praised 'Is This Love' as "a vibrant painting with sonic colors spanning Nick Cave-style cinematic musings, surfed-up post-punk guitars evocative of The Smiths and The Clash, and eerily danceable beats, the songs prove instantly magnetic. Still, descriptions don't do it justice. You've just got to let Elliot & The Ghost haunt you." Flavorpill lauded their "brand of Southern influenced po-rock," and Gimmie Shutter declared the disk as "mesmerizing." Similarly, CMJ applauded their "fresh airy kind of surf-pop in the vein of early Rosebuds or the Shins stripped of cardigans and sent back to a dank basement to get a little tipsy and start all over."

The band completed a three month long tour in support of 'Is This Love' in the Summer and Fall of 2014, and are now back with a brand new track titled 'Bad Enough' now available on all major online retailers.


Is blues the music of the Devil? The minor third note interval that's the basic ingredient of anything bluesy is famous for conveying a sad feeling, not evil, but - at least according to Wikipedia - "the word [blues] may have come from the term blue devils," and "depending on the religious community a musician belonged to, it was more or less considered as a sin to play this low-down music." W guess that simple fact made the genre very attractive to young rebels... who ended up moving to the more liberal US coasts...
Brooklyn's Junk Boys, an obscure band we stumbled upon almost randomly, seems to accept and even promote this notion. Their debut single "Call On Me" (streaming) features a devilish cover art, and an apocaliptic sound at least in part reminiscent of a hammondless and heavier version of The Doors, another band that enjoyed blue references to Beelzebub.-The Deli


Rosy Street are a New York group led by singer-songwriter Kyle Avallone, with Jon DeLorme on pedal-steel guitar & combo organ, Turner Stough on bass, and Alex Feldman on drums. Despite hailing from the big city, they eschew the buzz of the metropolis to mine an altogether more rootsy, twangy seam of music. The band are currently making their rounds about town with plans to tour and release an album later this year.