Beach House

Baltimore-based duo, Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally bring beauty and romance back to music with elegant vocals and sweet melodies. With seemingly simple instrumentation (a drum machine, some keyboards, guitar) and Legrand’s subtle yet commanding vocals, they’ve created a haunting debut album. "Tokyo Witch” opens with a simple synth beat with Legrand’s singing of unfamiliar city quarters, the momentum builds and is held steady with steady tambourine and Legrand’s confession, "All that I wanted to see is that I am better.” Legrand’s vocals hover somewhere between Francoise Hardy and Nico, and though the beauty and strength of the music is undeniable, it’s her vocals that drive the tracks with a definitive mood. And perhaps that’s the band’s brilliance: the ability to create instrumentation that is so in-synch with the vocals that the music becomes almost transparent. Transparent until "Childhood,” when Legrand’s vocals softly warn, "It’s the beginning of the end” and Scally’s piano riff comes in, repetitively skipping over the keys; the soundtrack to your childhood home movies.