It's Love: A Band of Bees

I haven't had an album on rotation this heavy since Belle and Sebastian's The Life Pursuit, which made me feel like sunshine and popsicles for months, until I overdid it and had to temporarily retire the album. Some of the songs on that album flashed me back to After School Specials from the mid-70's - breezy, poppy, nostalgic, and impossibly catchy.

And now this: you must discover A Band of Bees, known simply in the UK as The Bees. Their 2007 release, Octopus, is one of those rare albums where every single song on the album is a winner. Hip-shaking tunes with a perfectly blended post-modern hybrid of styles, from psychedelic sixties to Motown to indie-rock to ska to funk. Hammond organ, soaring harmonies, sassy horns, animal noises. It's the kind of album that makes you feel like you could be on a summer road trip, heading for bliss in, say, a magic plasticine bus.


Check out the YouTube video for their single "Who Cares What the Question Is?" for a toe-tappingly infectious taste of the Bees, exploring on the aforementioned bus. They seem to have gone under the U.S. radar, for the most part, but I can't imagine why. I'm completely in love.

Go, listen, now!