All It Takes Is One EskimO...

Musically speaking, I am a sucker for a lot of things. Good lyrics, interesting samples and creative music videos are all things that will give me reason to like a musical act. London based band One EskimO fulfills all these needs.
On a sidenote, I also happen to be a sucker for Starbucks, which is actually where I first heard about One EskimO. It was on one of those cards they give out for free iTunes downloads that I saw a free download for the band's single "Kandi." The video it appeared was animated, which immediately peaked my interest (I'm a sucker for animation). So, I looked it up on YouTube and discovered that it was a little vignette of a video. In fact, it's not even really a music video, but more a short film with One EskimO as it's sound track. It played out a love story between two characters: One EskimO and Little Feather (Not exactly PC, but we can talk about it in the comments). The video was animated beautifully by Gravy Media, a British animation group who did a good job fitting the music and the story line together.

The other thing that got me about this track is the sample. The voice singing the line "He called me baby all night long" is actually from the song "He Called Me Baby" by gospel/R&B singer Candi Staton (Now it makes sense why the song is called "Kandi" right?). It's a sample that also fits perfectly into the song, so much so that when I first heard it, I thought the band had a female vocalist.

Though, to my ears, One EskimO has that college jam band sound ala Guster or Dispatch (including bongo drums), what really gets me about this band is that they have a full concept for their album. After the success of their first video, "Hometime" which was also animated and featured the same characters, the group decided to create animations for all the songs which resulted in a "visual album". Here's the trailer.

I wish more musical artists were creative and conceptual with their albums like this.

One EskimO's full length album came out in the UK on September 21st and in the US on September 22nd. Their self-titled EP is also available now on iTunes.