Swedes Kluster serve up shifting, dazzling indie rock on debut "Over My Head"

I'm kidding of course, but there are a wave of bands with jazz educations in the indie world at the moment. Norwegians Lumikide are a great example, and one listen to "Over My Head" shows that Kluster share a lot of stylistic DNA with them.

The Swedish six-piece are their own creature however, and "Over My Head" is a great way to introduce themselves. It's a very busy song, nimble guitar lines and a skittish rhythm giving it a kind of nervous, restless energy, and Linnea Hall's vocals soak it in emotional depth. They're clearly smart capable musicians: you can't write a song that shifts gears and between phases this easily without being that. "Over My Head"'s flow from dreamy lulls to intense squall and force make it a great piece of layered, intelligent indie-rock. Listen and read an interview with the band below.

Hey Kluster! Tell us about your band and how you formed.

"Most of us were fed-up jazz musicians looking for an exit door from the academic world of music. Having played in different jazz and pop groups, both inside and outside of school, we were all longing for a more experimental kind of project where the collective creative process was in focus, rather than a specific style of music. We had all played together in different bands before, and finding people in the kind of narrow-minded school environment was tough, so the constitution of the band came pretty naturally. Right now we’re based in Malmö, with one band member living in Stockholm going back and forth to Malmö. It’s kind of tricky finding time for rehearsals, but when we do it’s a very intense and rewarding process. Your focus is pretty much nowhere else but in the rehearsing space."

You formed in 2014 and have a lot of live experience, having supported Nicole Saboune and Frankie Cosmos, but this is your first official release. Did it take a while to perfect your recorded sound?

"We’ve gone through some phases trying to find a sound that feels both new and fun to us. We actually recorded an EP by ourselves in 2015. The sound back then – dreamy pop drenched in reverb - was a whole different band compared to how we sound today. The sound we have now pretty much came together when we recorded the album that’s coming out later this year. We allowed ourselves to experiment and really exaggerate what we heard when we were recording and we’re really happy about how it turned out. What you’re going to hear on this album is probably a good hint of what direction we are heading in."

Tell us about "Over My Head".

"'Over My Head' is about the conflict between escapism and the desire to expose yourself – about the evasive glance and how it affects you. We’ve played this song for quite a while and took some time before we found a sound we thought fitted the lyrics and the mood in the song. As with the rest of the album, this song really fell into place during the recording session."

After this single, what's coming up over the next few months?

"We have some gigs coming up in Stockholm and Malmö. We’ve been so consumed by the process of producing this album, so now we are really looking forward to coming out and playing! We’re also releasing some more singles from the album before the whole album comes out in the summer."