Song of the Day: Feathers, "Believe"

When I worked at Entertainment Weekly, we had a thing we did very briefly wherein we would go all-in on a new band, highlighting them in the magazine and producing some video content surrounding an interview and an in-office performance. I don't recall what we titled this thing, but I do recall that we only did it with two bands. The first was the Lone Bellow, an inoffensive folk pop trio that had a bit of a run during the ill-advised Mumfordmania from a few years ago. The other band was Feathers, a synth pop group from Texas that I was utterly obsessed with for about seven months. 

Feathers' debut album If All Now Here was one of those records I got sent way in advance of its release—I think it arrived in May, but in my memory I was spinning it during the previous Christmas break. The band was primarily the brainchild of a woman named Anastasia Dimou, who was generally obsessed with dark '80s syhthpop and specifically fixated on Depeche Mode. If All Now Here is the best album Depeche never made, full of plastic noises that still sound visceral, a doomsday bass thump, and Dimou's airy alto rolling in and out of the melodic crevices like a fog. In fact, it recalls vintage Depeche so well that Dave Gahan drafted Feathers into being their opening act on a European tour (as well as a legendary SXSW gig). 

If All Now Here never took off, though I still bust out "Believe" every once in a while. It will always stick with me because it was one of the songs Feathers played live in the office, and since you can't really do an unplugged version of what they do, they brought the entirety of their sound, which was loud and imposing and intense. I'm sure most of the office (and our neighbors) hated it, but I just couldn't get enough.