Band To Know: Helicopters - "Headlights"

Download: Helicopters - "Headlights"
Download: Helicopters - "Rotofugi"

This past Thursday, Mission Of Burma played one of the two shows that they scheduled form Fall of 2007 at Chicago's Abbey Pub. Opening for Burma was a Chicago electronic trio called .Helicopters. If you're a fan of pleasant, softly sung songs with hints of IDM and indie (like Glorious Monster, for instance), then it won't matter how many parachutes there are on board, because this is one Helicopter you'll want to stay on.

The group formed in 2005 with the goal to do the following to their songs: "fall in love with, break up with, destroy, build anew, polish, apologize to, and ultimately put to bed (them)". Helicopters accomplished this task by putting out 2006's How To Fall Fake Asleep. The success and acclaim of that album from such sources as WXRT and Time Out Chicago led to the recording and release of this year's EP Walking To Be Looked At. The EP went in a more Death Cab-influenced direction from How To Fall, in terms of having an introspective tenor and jangling guitars as starting points. But Helicopters also kept a lot of the bleeps-and-bloops, and the combination of both of those elements brings to mind favorably groups in which Ben Gibbard participates, with a little more of a rock foundation.

With all that creative momentum going, it's no wonder that the band wants to record another album of new material. They've been doing exactly that. A few weeks back (around Halloween, specifically), the band posted the demo for a song called "Headlights" which shows that Helicopters are going to be the next group that romantically forlorn girls listen to while they are in their bed rooms. I wouldn't blame them either - "Headlights" has got the same kind of accessible melancholy that made Transatlanticism appealing. Throw in a little electro-pop glow, and you've got yourselves a catchy piece of indietronic pop.

Listen to "Headlights", plus "Rotofugi" from Walking To Be Looked At at the top of the post.

Buy Walking To Be Looked At here and How To Fall Fake Asleep here.

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(Jonathan Graef)