Philly band swims through debut
By:
Alison Smyth
Issue date: 4/4/08 Section: Arts & Entertainment
The Swimmers have a rather strange and wonderful tale of formation. You might know Steven Yutsy-Burkey and Rick Sieber from the former One Star Hotel, another Philadelphia band that has parted ways. However, the band mates, including the Swimmers' keyboardist Krista Yutsy-Burkey, who is married to the front man, met at college in Indiana. Scott French and Steven worked together tuning organs, of all things.
Here we are in 2008, and the result of these chance meetings is a fresh and harmonious melding of musical minds.
The Philadelphia local band recently released its debut album, Fighting Trees. The record was released on MAD Dragon Records, Drexel University's student-staffed label. Its namesake is an acronym for Westphal College of Media Arts & Design combined with the university's mascot. It is not often that you hear a new band, only to find it is ascribed to a student-staffed label. How many student-run labels are out there, anyway? Not that many. As one of only six clients, the Swimmers are a wise edition to a growing label.
The educational institutions of the area are helping these musicians along, and the Swimmers are gaining attention via the local University of Pennsylvania radio station, WXPN. The station featured the Swimmers in an installment of its Y-Pod podcast, featuring an interview and acoustic performance. With its stripped-down vocals and instrumentals, there is not much difference between the live performance and the album recordings. That is really something to be said for music that sounds just as crisp and cool in either form.
| Fighting Trees The Swimmers MAD Dragon Records Rocks like: Spoon, The New Pornographers  out of |
Here we are in 2008, and the result of these chance meetings is a fresh and harmonious melding of musical minds.
The Philadelphia local band recently released its debut album, Fighting Trees. The record was released on MAD Dragon Records, Drexel University's student-staffed label. Its namesake is an acronym for Westphal College of Media Arts & Design combined with the university's mascot. It is not often that you hear a new band, only to find it is ascribed to a student-staffed label. How many student-run labels are out there, anyway? Not that many. As one of only six clients, the Swimmers are a wise edition to a growing label.
The educational institutions of the area are helping these musicians along, and the Swimmers are gaining attention via the local University of Pennsylvania radio station, WXPN. The station featured the Swimmers in an installment of its Y-Pod podcast, featuring an interview and acoustic performance. With its stripped-down vocals and instrumentals, there is not much difference between the live performance and the album recordings. That is really something to be said for music that sounds just as crisp and cool in either form.
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