World Leader Pretend’s lead vocalist, Keith Ferguson, sounds like a cross between Michael Stipe (R.E.M.) and James Walsh (Starsailor), but their music shares little with Stipe’s band (despite naming themselves after an R.E.M. song) and a great deal with Walsh’s. World Leader Pretend, despite hailing from New Orleans, fall squarely in the Britpop camp, with […]

Named after a small, Hungarian-made motor scooter, Solex is the project of Amsterdam-based record-shop owner and songwriter Elisabeth Esselink. That’s about as descriptive as one can accurately get with Solex, though, because her music is so odd. It’s rock music, but not in the conventional sense. It heavily uses samples, but it’s not hip-hop or […]