ARTISTS TO WATCH: Of Monsters and Men
Of Monsters and Men
Bring it on, Iceland! These indie-folk rockers who call themselves Of Monsters and Men drop us into “Little Talks,” their latest single, with little warning just how great the music’s going to be. They’ve been featured on NPR’s First Listen, and their Into The Woods EP just reached #1 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart, which is for bands who have never had a top 100 album. Paste, meanwhile, rightly dubbed the band the “next big thing,” and in an era where Mumford and Sons and Florence + The Machine are capable of building wide-reaching audiences, I find it impossible to believe this band can’t live up to similar hype.
The video for “Little Talks” builds the band’s modern mythology, with an impressive animation showcasing the band’s sense of unbridled whimsy, as the exceptional vocals are backed by a wall of horns straight out of 90s third-wave ska. It’s a brilliant mix which showcases just how much fun Icelandic bands are capable of having, even if they do spend much of their year north of the arctic circle. It will leave you instantly wanting more, making “Little Talks” a perfect candidate to go viral.
