“Five boys. Two girls. Twelve tracks. One hell of an album,” says Americana-UKʼs Robin Cracknell. Featuring them in this monthʼs CMJ NMM “On the Verge,” Jessica Suarez says “the good stuff is everywhere...hazily strummed sing-a-longs, boygirl harmonies, vibrant keys...” Sunshine pop/country-rock, Brothers and Sisters is [now] eight record junkies who abandoned their homes in California, Hawaii, Louisiana, Tennessee and North Carolina, somehow found each other in Austin, Texas in the summer of 2005.

Described by The Austin Chronicle as “a velvety pocket of Seventies tambourine pop,” their music is kind of like listening to The Band, Neil Young, Big Star, Willie Nelson, The Mamas and the Papas, The Millennium, The Beach Boys and The Byrds all at once, but filtered through Nashvilleʼs mid-seventies Countrypolitan machines, the walls of Topanga Canyon, and cans of whiskey.

In the last year, Brothers and Sisters made an album, a video (and are working on a second), and have been enjoying sold-out shows in Austin at venues like Emoʼs and The Parish. This fall, they head out on a national tour with ...Trail of Dead (whose frontperson, Conrad, is also in the band). How they do all this and manage to come across as though they spend all day laying in the grass is beyond us, but weʼre thrilled to be a part of an album that has become a fixture on our stereos. Read the bandʼs full bio (written by Okkervil Riverʼs Will Sheff).