Søren Løkke Juul brings us the sounds of Indians from the streets of Copenhagen. Once his solo project, now a three-member touring band (with brothers Jebbe and Emil Davidsen), Indians has had a busy schedule of late, getting a spate of support slots with bands such like Beirut, Perfume Genius and Other Lives, and just finishing a tour in the US with shows at SXSW.

All this comes only a relatively short while after he played his first show as Indians in February 2012, and not long after that Søren had a record deal with British label 4AD. He was signed (as he describes in an interview here) on the back of the home-made video for ‘Magic Kids’ after it was spotted online.

Somewhere Else is the debut album from Indians and it was released at the end of January. A melodious mixture of electronic versus acoustic, overall this is a light-feeling album. Søren’s fragile vocals and synth accompaniments create a somewhat ethereal sound throughout the whole record, with one or two of the tracks culminating in semi-orchestral crescendos – both the album opener ‘New’ and the last track ‘Somewhere Else’ have a souring aspect that build to a lush finale. Just over half-way through is ‘Cakelakers’ – which according to Søren was his very first ‘guitar’ song, written on the porch of his aunt’s cottage just outside Copenhagen – appearing in the midst of a peppering of delicate moments in the form of gentle harmonies in ‘Bird’ and the lulling start of ‘La Femme’, before the heartbeat-like drum machine kicks in.

Overall, an album of magestic lo-fi pop that can take you into a dream-like state – a nice combination in my book. Here we share with you a couple of official videos, with a lovely ‘Take Away Show‘ from La Blogotheque, which gives the impression that Søren is somewhat of a shy soul (and not very talkative), so I was happy to discover a more chatty Søren in an informative interview from last month with The Line of Best Fit; find out more about the story behind Indians here. And if you still wish to be convinced further, check out the beautiful three-track outdoor session from 4AD which aimed to capture the essence and atmosphere of the music ‘with a foreboding sense of wonder’. I think it pretty much succeeded. Enjoy!

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Somewhere Else – Released 25 January 2013: