NAP EYES (CAN)

Nap Eyes makes crooked, literate guitar pop refracted through the gray Nova Scotian rain. Their songs are equal parts shambling and sophisticated, with one eye on the dirt and one trained on the starry firmament, inhabiting a skewed world where odes to NASA, brain protein aggregation, and the Earth’s magnetic field coexist easily with lyrics about insomnia, self-reproach, and drinking too much. In the world of Nap Eyes, workaday details punctuate (and puncture) cosmic concerns, as enigmatic songwriter, singer, and rhythm guitarist Nigel Chapman wrestles with air and angels, struggling (and often failing) to reconcile the Romantic rifts, both real and imagined, that define our lives: between chaos and order; solipsism and fellowship; the anxiety of social (dis)orders both big and small; and the various intersections and oppositions of religion, art, and science.

NAIVE SET (NL)

Naive Set from Amsterdam has been crafting jangly guitar pop for over ten years, on four albums and one EP. Their music has roots in ’60s beat and college rock, in equal parts reminiscent of the Kinks and the Feelies. VPRO calls them the “nonchalant pioneers of the Dutch DIY.” MOJO once dubbed them “classic-indie artisans.”

Their latest album, In Air Quotes, released October 2024, contains the, by now, Naive Set hallmarks of infectious melodies, 4-part harmonies, bouncy rhythms, and expressive wordplay, to create music both easy on the ears and pleasing on repeat.