What a beautiful song....

Since winning the GMA Songwriter of the Year award in 2006, Christa Wells has been best known as the writer of top songs for other artists. In 2009 she released her own solo album, Frame the Clouds, featuring performances by some of the artists who have recorded her work, such as Plumb, Todd Smith (member of Selah), and Sara Groves.

In 2011, she released her second solo project, HOW EMPTINESS SINGS, which received high accolades from both reviewers and fans, followed by a joint effort EP, IMAGE OF GOD, with fellow singer/songwriter Nicole Witt. Under the Radar Radio has included songs from How Emptiness Sings on their list of top gourmet songs of 2011.

As a songwriter, her songs have been hit singles, including most notably “Held” recorded by Natalie Grant, which received airplay in both Christian and mainstream markets.

Born in Texas and raised in a military family, Christa spent her childhood in various states and overseas in Germany. Her earliest influence was Amy Grant, but listeners will hear more prominently traces of Natalie Merchant and Norah Jones, among others.

Today Christa lives with her family in North Carolina, where she works at balancing her musical work with family and community life and is an advocate for Masterpiece Ministries, a creative arts camp for high schoolers.

Patrick Wolf

Patrick Wolf is releasing a 2-disk album in October that is a re-imagination of his songs. The album is in honor of the ten year anniversary of his first released album, and every song on Sundark & River is going to acoustic. This is the released preview track for that album. This song is ridiculously beautiful.

 

New Sigor Rós!

For what they describe as a Mystery Film Experiment for their new album Valtari, Sigur Rós gave twelve filmmakers identical modest budgets and invited them to create videos based on ‘whatever came into their head’ when they listened to songs from the album.

I want

Music for your...umm...summer

Fang Island is an American indie rock band formed in Providence, Rhode Island, and based in Brooklyn, New York. The group consists of guitarists Jason Bartell, Chris Georges and drummer Marc St. Sauveur. Their self-titled debut album on Sargent House was released in February 2010. MOJO praised the band for being “simply killer fun”, while The 405 described the album as “A joyous stomp with bouncing drums and tightly played guitarmonies… a real winner” and named it one of the best albums of 2010. Pitchfork called the music on Fang Island “honest and life-affirming and infectious”, tagging the album with the high praise of “Best New Music”. In March 2010, the band performed at the SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas, and were named by social networking analytics site Next Big Sound as the artists who experienced the fastest growth in online fandom during the festival. Following their rapid gain in attention, the band spent the remainder of 2010 playing a plethora of shows including support for The Flaming Lips, Stone Temple Pilots, Matt & Kim and numerous headline shows across the North America, the UK and Europe. Whereas Fang Island described their debut as “everyone high-fiving everyone”, their highly anticipated follow up Major is evermore confident, triumphant and brimming with infectious enthusiasm. Its warm harmonies are given proper berth with more expansive dynamics and focused pop song craft. Fang Island’s Major was be released on July 24th, 2012.