Melanie McGovern

Emily Jane White’s new album, Ode to Sentience is an album of darkness and mystery. Vocally her dulcet tones have been likened to Mazzy Star and Cat Power, a voice that is at once both rich and wispy, a subtle whisper sucking you in much like the darkness she utters of being intoxicated by.

What an end to a great year for Bella Union, their issue of John Grant’s Queen of Denmark debut successfully found itself in most magazine and national newspapers’ ‘Albums of 2010’ features, and he too headlined the last uniting of label artists at Union Chapel in the summer.

The Midsummer Nights Dream stage set up at the Royal Festival Hall, complete with lamps, foliage, a tree strung with fairy lights and a starry backdrop marked the occasion as magical before Australian siblings Angus and Julia Stone, and their Transatlantic band, even set foot on stage.

Kate Stables is the staple of folk project This is the Kit, who, alongside long-time collaborator Jesse D. Vernon, perform ordinarily as a two-piece splitting their time between Bristol and Paris. Initially noticed in 2006 thanks to a Folk Off compilation featuring other nu-weird-folksters Animal Collective and Vashti Bunyan, This is the Kit were hailed as a refreshing British folk act; with BBC Radio’s Huw Stephens referring to Kate as …

With their second recording Wild Go receiving airplay on UK shores Dark Dark Dark’s pitch and note perfect re-creation of their Balkan inspired tracks tapped out a heartfelt oscillation between liveliness and loneliness, with the precision of it all framing their Eastern-folk and pitch dark jazz hybrid.

The candle-lit environs of Dalston’s Cafe Oto felt a particularly apt setting for chamber-folk five-piece The Magic Lantern to host their single launch party. Amongst the flickering tea-lights atop wooden tables, decorated with remnants of Organic beer and homemade cakes, a crowd of friends, family and listeners new and old gathered.

Sparrow and the Workshop released their debut back in April; the reception of which has shocked even the band itself. They may be based in Scotland but this band actually comprise of a Scotsman, Welshman and a Chicagoan girl…

Hi54LoFi artist A Singer of Songs, Lieven Scheerlinch has collaborated with New Zealander, Hollie Fullbrook aka Tiny Ruins, which perfectly unites the whispered dreamy folk of the pair.

Despite the departure of Claudia Deheza from the band a month ago, the remaining School of Seven Bells members (now duo) played an impressive show at London’s Heaven last week.

Squinch Owl is the musical moniker of singer-songwriter Sofia Albam, and while the image of a squinching owl may seem to embody a creature that is fearful and shy, the voice of this artist is anything but a passing flutter.

Minneapolis chamber-folk sextet Dark Dark Dark embarked on a winter tour this week. The tour, which runs until the end of the month covers France, Belgium and much of the UK.

It’s strange to start at the end, but at the close of Micah P. Hinson’s string swathed set at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, he stated that “music speaks for you when you can’t”.