Breaking: Fleet Foxes

Who: Seattle's harmonic five piece Fleet Foxes, who follow-up a critically-acclaimed EP and intense live performances with their self-titled debut album.

Sounds Like: A mixture of fellow Sub Poppers Band of Horses and Iron & Wine, Fleet Foxes create harmonic pop jams. Think CSNY performing Pet Sounds. "I'm just a sucker for harmonies," says frontman Robin Pecknold.

Vital Stats:

• Growing up, Pecknold found inspiration in Simon & Garfunkel, Beach Boys bootlegs and role-playing video game *Final Fantasy*. "Those Japanese games had these dense and mysterious soundscapes," he remembers. "A song would just loop the whole time you were in an elf village or whatever. It was catchy and mysterious — that sounds like good music to me."

• Pecknold and guitarist Skye Skjelset first started writing songs together in their high school's science lab during lunch periods. After graduation, the duo moved to Seattle, where they befriended labelmates Band of Horses and fellow Seattlites the Cave Singers.

• Before the band even released their debut album two weeks ago, they were already opening for Americana all-stars Wilco. Fleet Foxes have several festival dates set for this summer, as well as their first tour. Says Pecknold of the band's sudden success, "It was like stepping into a completely different universe."

Hear It Now: Fleet Foxes and the Sun Giant EP are both available now. Click above for a live performance of "White Winter Hymnal" at this year's Sasquatch festival.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

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