Crystal Fighters

I spent a lot of time with their early albums—the way they’d layer electronic production with these organic, almost folk-like textures, strings and samples mixed in ways that shouldn’t work but did. They were never trying to be cool about it, just making pop music that sounded like they’d spent serious time in the studio getting the color right. There’s something about a band that treats the space between sounds as carefully as the sounds themselves, and Crystal Fighters did that. Their stuff felt small and intricate despite being bright and poppy, which is rare—most electronic bands are either too cerebral or too eager to please. They landed somewhere else entirely.