Of Monsters and Men is an amiable group of day dreamers who craft folkie pop songs. But last year, the normally mild-mannered six pack—who's releasing their EP, Into the Woods, on December 20—transformed into total rock stars after stomping out their competition during Músiktilraunir, a yearly battle of the bands in their native Iceland. "We just kind of…won," recalls co-singer/guitarist Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir. "We weren...

Towns are an abstract idea, in the same way that music is. The logician would argue that since a town is abstract and music is abstract then a town must be music. Revelstoke is a town in the British Columbian Rockies. One of the most beautiful towns in the world (as most settlements hiding in the mountains are), where the tectonic hands clapped loudly and bent their geological elbows high into the sapphire sky. And the trees laughed and swayed and danced between the snow and the...

Indie-folk pop band from Austin, Texas, began as an acoustic duo consisting of Kelsey Wilson and Alexander Beggins singing ukulele love songs written and shared over red wine and old photographs. With northern U.S. parks and fields as their backdrop and a tour van as their practice studio, Kelsey and Alexander formed their fi...