The Holiday Crowd

Shortly after the release of their brilliant debut "Over The Bluffs" (on Shelflife/New Romantic For The World) there has been a lot of enthusiasm on the internet  (here) about these indie pop newcomers from Toronto, Canada. When you listen to their songs for the first time you are immediately reminded of the music of The Smiths: In fantastic tunes like "Never Speak Of It Again" and "While She Waits" the charismatic voice of singer Imran and jangly guitars on reverb recall the atmosphere of Morrissey's former band.

Imran Haniff and Colin Bowers founded the band after high school. They wrote some songs but never played live. After ten years, "the longest break a band has ever had" (Bowers), Imran and Colin decided to play together again. They were joined by Alex Roberts and David Barnes, who now play bass and drums. While the band played the first live gigs in small local clubs in 2011, they not long ago supported Paul Weller in Toronto.

The Holiday Crowd will play for the first time ever in Europe: at Indie Pop Days! We are really looking forward to hearing some of our favourite songs of the last months played live!

The video "While She Waits" was filmed by Street Folk Sessions in Toronto's historic Allan Gardens Park. It features a new acoustic arrangement of this smashing song.

Be Forest

After last year's surprise act, Young Wrist, we are very happy to present another brilliant Italian dreampop band. Be Forest is a young trio from the adriatic town of Pesaro. Their debut album "Cold" on the Italian label "We Were Never Being Boring" is a beautiful example of how the Post-Punk passion for reverb-filled guitar, minimalistic but hypnotic drumming and echoing female voices is still alive.

Inspired by bands like My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain and Joy Division they still have enough ideas of their own to make us want to dive into their ocean of sound.




This is the video "Hanged Man". Enjoy!

Sleeping Policemen

Sleeping Policemen are serious people. They all have regular jobs but they still find time to make great pop music. In the course of some hard working months with sessions early in the morning and late at night the five-piece from Hamburg recorded their debut. The result is an overwhelming indie pop album, a rare and precious thing in the German music scene. Producer Rick McPhail, keyboard- and guitar player in the legendary band Tocotronic, did a great job. Playing on vintage instruments they write perfect pop songs like "Bonnie" that reminds of early Stereolab and Bella Vista. On other songs late Teenage Fanclub and US-indie-favourites Rocketship shine through. Four of the band members sing in close harmony while a leading voice perfects that sound with beautiful melodies.

No question: The debut of Sleeping Policemen is the perfect soundtrack for a journey with the car on a sunny sunday afternoon.



Here is the video to "High Skies" from Sleeping Policemen's self-titled debut, released on Shining Waters/Apricot in spring 2012.

The poster is here!

Tattaa! This is this year's Indie Pop Days poster. You will see it all over Berlin  in a few weeks and of course we are going to print some postcard-flyers as we did it the two years before. So have a look around in cafes, take one of the postcards, and send some greetings from Berlin!

The little detectives among you can see that there are more bands scheduled for the festival than we announced so far. So here is the next round of artists:

Stars In Coma, The Holiday Crowd, Sleeping Policemen, and Be Forest.

Each of them will be featured on our blog over the next days -  today we want to give you more info on one of our favourite Scandinavian bands, our swedish guests Stars in Coma.

The band  played at the Indie Pop Days festival in 2010 already. The venue was a small place called Multilayerladen, a cafe/bar/gallery we spent our opening night of the first Indie Pop Days Festival. The stage basically consisted of a tall wooden bench. André Brorsson, the brainchild behind Stars in Coma recalls it like this: "I remember observing everyone's shoes because the bench we were standing on were so tall. The whole place was really small but the height of the stage was equal to an arena!" "It was our second show in Berlin, and the audience were really great and supportive," he adds.

Stars in Coma put out its first release in 2005, the "Gizmo goes to War", a lo-fi-sounding tribute to André Brorsson's black cat. Brorsson, who writes and records all music, has been making albums for friends since he was in high school, hidden away in his bedroom playing all the instruments himself. He draws inspiration from folk, rock, dance music and pop. Since he started making albums, the music has moved through periods of guitar dominated rock, disco and swooning romanticism, all of which come together in a perfect creative storm on the latest Stars in Coma release Midnight Puzzle, which has received a lot of praises in various media outlets this spring. Live, Brorsson fleshes out the songs with the help of his girlfriend Nicole Eklund on flute and keys, bass player Mattias Lidehäll and drummer Håkan Carlsson. The band has been actively touring in countries such as Sweden, Denmark, UK, Germany, Italy and France. The band now returns to Indie Pop Days for the second time, and will make sure to cheer up the Berlin audience with their colorful outfits, uptempo hyper beats and unpredictable pop melodies.