One of Britain’s finest songwriters, Slowdive and Mojave 3 man Neil Halstead has eked out a solo career on a trio of incredible record marked by skill, sensitivity and invention.

As the primary creative force behind one of the most underrated bands of the nineties, Halstead is responsible for composing one of that decades best albums too, the staggeringly sublime Souvlaki.

His solo work isn’t out of character with Slowdive’s sound – Halstead’s ability to wring a mood, a feeling, a setting from a guitar and a lyric is undisputed and last year’s Palindrome Hunches was his most enchanting release to date. 

We met Neil earlier this week for a session take on one of that record’s best cuts, ‘Tied to You’. Watch it above.

Under the Autre Ne Veut name, Brooklyn’s Arthur Ashin found a voice for his music with this year’s Anxiety – his second long-player – marking the transition to vast and fully-realised experiments in R&B, moving away from the bedroom sound of his first album.

Ashin’s recent shows in the UK got us all hot under the collar and before he departed back to New York, he recorded a fine take of last November’s single (and standout Anxiety track) ‘Counting’ which you can watch below.

The brainchild of New Zealand-born Portland, Oregon resident Ruban Nielson, Unknown Mortal Orchestra have eked out a powerful reputation in a very short space of time.

Through two stellar records that confidently skirt the space between lo-if, pop and psych, Nielson’s knack for intelligent fusion has raised the band’s intelligent sounds to a level that resonates  among both critics and fans. Nielson’s both a student of music and a maker: UMO’s sound is littered with an awareness of the great milestones of art pop music, from The Beatles to Beefheart.

Ruban met up with Best Fit back in February and cut two tracks with our sessions team.  Here’s the first – a laid back ‘So Good At Being In Trouble’, which the band dropped as a single earlier this year.

The band are lined up to play two dates in November, announced today:

November
7 – Electric Ballroom, London
8 – Gorilla, Manchester

Under the pseudonym of Farao, London-based and Norwegian singer-songwriter Kari Jahnsen makes music shot through with a touch of sun-kissed Laurel Canyon and the kind of assertive percussive that we come to expect from the fellows Nordic talent like Oh Land or even Wildbirds & Peacedrums.

We premiered her debut track Forces on the site back in January and met up with her a few weeks back for a performance of his first single, ‘Skin’, which gets a digital-only release on 27 May. Watch the session above.

You can catch Farao tomorrow night (11 April) at St Pancras Old Church in London. Thereafter, she embarks on various dates in Europe and the UK throughout the spring. Full dates below.

April
11/4 – St Pancras Old Church, London,
14/4 – Botanique, Brussels
15/4 – La Chaufferie, Paris
17/4 – Rockefeller, Oslo
18/4 – Astra Kulturhaus, Berlin
20/4 – Ancienne Belgique, Brussels
25/4 – Union Chapel, London

May
14/5 – The Cluny, Newcastle
16/5 – Junction 2, Cambridge
17/5 – The Great Escape Festival, Brighton
19/5 – Glee Club, Birmingham
21/5 – Colston Hall, Bristol
22/5 – Bush Hall, London
23/5 – Glee Club, Nottingham
24/5 – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
25/5 – Jericho Tavern, Oxford
26/5 – Glee Club, Cardiff
29/5 – Sebright Arms, London

July
28/7 – Secret Garden Party, Cambridgeshire

Susanne Sundfør has been an almost unprecedented success of Norway’s vibrant music scene. The 27-year old singer-songwriter recently released her fourth record, The Silicone Veil, which our reviewer called “an album of spectral, elemental romance and intrigue”.

Watch her above performing the title track from that record, which recently topped the charts in Norway, propelling her to popstar status.

Sundfør’s first three records – Take One from 2008, The Brothel which was the biggest selling album of 2010 in Norway, and 2011′s A Night At The Salle Pleyel – are re-issued this week via Sonnet Sound.

Here’s the second of our sessions with the Oklahama-born rootsy singer-songwriter John Fullbright.

‘Me Wanting You’ is a less frenetic cut than the first (‘Jericho’, from back in February) but equally as impressive.

You can catch Fullbright tonight (8 April) at London’s Bush Hall.

Thirty-one years ago, Edwyn Collins released his debut album with post-punks Orange Juice, cutting his teeth into a career which has seen him become an alt-rock, if not near national, treasure since.

And here he is in 2013, performing ’31 Years’ for Best Fit, every bit as intriguing a live performer as back then. Collins’ latest album from which the track is lifted, Understated was released on 25 March.

Watch his Best Fit session above.

Having earned his stripes loaning his rich soulful tones to Rudimental‘s Top Twenty ‘Not Giving In’ and the Number 1 smash ‘Feel The Love’, London’s John Newman steps out of the shadows to perform ‘Out Of My Head’ for Best Fit.

Backed by just a piano and guitar accompaniment, Newman’s yearning croon is given centre stage and showcases his incredible range and emotional timbre beautifully. Watch the session above and remember, you can sign up to the Best Fit Sessions YouTube Channel for regular updates here.

Melody Prochet recorded her debut record record with Tame Impala‘s Kevin Parker in Perth last summer. As Melody’s Echo Chamber, the Domino-signed Parisian multi-instrumentalist embraces the sunnier side of the 20th-century’s greatest pop songs, with an experimental Gallic twist for good measure.

The video for album highlight ‘Crystallized’ dropped back in February but we met up with Melody a few weeks back for a glorious and full-bodied live take, which you can watch above.

Düsseldorf-based experimental composer and musician Hauschka recently hooked up with Grammy-award winning American violin prodigy Hilary Hahn after being introduced by Tom Brosseu.

The resulting record - Silfra - came from improvisations between the pair and was recorded in Iceland. We spoke to Hauschka earlier this month and met up with him and Hahn a few days later to record a Best Fit session, which you can watch above.

Silfra is available now through Decca. Hauschka has also just released a remix version of his album Salon Des Amateurs through Fat Cat.

Big thanks to The Vortex for letting us use their venue and piano.

Iceland’s record for producing one truly huge band per decade (and we’d go with Sugarcubes-Björk-Sigur Rós for the last three) continued last year with  Of Monsters and Men‘s massive success. 

The quintet dropped their debut My Head is an Animal over in the UK last summer but the record had already gained a monumental following in both their home country and elsewhere by that point, with considerable success coming from the US. At one point, The Guardian called them “the biggest group you’ve never heard of” while Rolling Stone went for the hyperbolic “new U2″ tag.

We met up with three of the five a few weeks back, prior to their biggest London show to date. Watch the results above; a rousing take of album track ‘Your Bones’. My Head Is An Animal is available over on iTunes. The band return to the UK in July for three dates.

July

2 – Bournemouth Academy,  Bournemouth
3 – De La War Pavilion,  Bexhill on Sea
16 – Somerset House, London

Our second time meeting up with London-based fourpiece Veronica Falls (the first was two years ago) finds the Bella Union-signed band during something of a career high. 

Free from the death fixations of their debut, the band have embraced their poppier side for the follow up Waiting for Something to Happen, winning acclaim across the board. Here they are with an acoustic cut of the album’s title track.

The mighty Minnesotans Low returned this month with a record that ranks among their best.

The Jeff Tweedy-produced The Invisible Way is the trio’s tenth record and one that our writer Michael James Hall reckoned was “as close to epiphanal as a record is likely to get”. We met up with Alan and Mimi a few weeks ago on a Friday evening in London’s Bloomsbury district. The basement of the London Review bookshop, a breath away from the British Museum, proved to be a suitably isolated setting for a session take of ‘Waiting’.

Low tour the UK next month, dates below.

April
24 – Glee Club, Birmingham
25 – Central Methodist Hall, Manchester
26 – Sage, Gateshead
27 – Classic Grand, Glasgow
29 – Trinity, Bristol,
30 – Barbican Centre, London

Many thanks to the London Review Bookshop. 

We stopped by to say hi to Dan Deacon just before his utterly insane Valentine’s Day show at East London’s Village Underground a few weeks back. 

Before the madness kicked in (our reviewer described it as an ‘electro-punk barn dance’), Deacon and his incredible band found time to play us recent single ‘Crash Jam’, taken from the wonderful America album.

As both an artist and musician, the unique talents of Keaton Henson are one of the most compelling in the current musical landscape.

Branching out for his second record Birthdays, the South London singer-songwriter has hooked up with the likes of Jesca Hoop, Tyler (Band of Horses) Ramsey and ubiquitous drummer Matt Chamberlain. The resulting songs are a beautiful, tender listen that ultimately rewards the brave. Henson’s music brims with a catharsis and self-examination unlike any we’ve heard in a long time.

Hooking up with Keaton a few weeks back, he gave us a rendition of ‘You’ from Birthdays that made our spine tingle. We’re loathe to use the word ‘fragile’ – it’s too easy a word to throw out there – but perhaps there is no other.

We meet up with Charlotte Church amid the early stages of a reinvention that sees her rise up from the woman we’ve known as child, teenager and young adult into something entirely of her own making.

It’s a brave move for someone who, as Elizabeth Day wrote in The Guardian, has ” been part of our collective celebrity consciousness for so long”. Church had sold 10 million records by the time she was 22. Now, post-Leveson and following a series of albums that seemed to mostly embody someone else’s idea of what she should be, the 27-year old former classical starlet has opted for an under-the-radar approach to making music. Playing a set of low-key shows around the capital over the last year and putting out a series of five EPs is a deliberate move that’s helping her hone a performance ethic very different to the one she was raised with.

Somehow, it works. Questions of authenticity might linger with some who have trouble accepting her move to a more left-field sound but Church has greater claims to authenticity than most. If 2013 is about a pop music that embodies an artist-controlled aesthetic, sound and dynamic, Church’s career trajectory is entirely in-line and on-message

We took Charlotte  to The Great Eastern Bear, a gallery on the site of a former brothel in London’s East End, for her Best Fit Session. Her performance of ‘Nerve’ (from the Two EP which drops today) clips back the nine-minute track to a respectable five and hints further as to the compelling path she’s on. Later this month she heads to SXSW for shows that see her sandwiched between the likes of Diamond Rings and Fallulah, followed up by dates in LA, San Francisco, New York and Toronto.

When we meet Church, she’s as articulate, warm and down-to-earth as one would hope. Brimming with enthusiasm, we talk about her love for Sufjan Stevens and Björk. Once the cameras start rolling, she’s the most complicit and least diva-like subject we’ve ever worked with, striving for perfection as part of a band as well as the front-woman.

South Londoner Misty Miller put out her first record at the age of 15 – an album that sold 60,000 copies to boot and showcased both a folk-orientated sound and aesthetic.

Fast forward a few years and the now 18-year old Millers is newly signed to Sony imprint Relentless, with a sound that reflects a more raucous set of reference points. Best Fit took its sessions crew along to capture a performance of EP track ‘Do You Know What I Mean’.

We’ve been incredibly taken by our first impressions of 23-year old Jetta.

The Liverpool-born singer stepped into the limelight after a stint as a backing vocalist for the likes of Cee Lo Green and Paloma Faith, with her debut track ‘Start a Riot’ from late last year precipitating a label bidding war.

Jetta heads over to SXSW next month and we have more music to look forward to in April. Apart from that we don’t know a lot about her other other than the wonderfully effusive personality she has and the fact that she can really belt out a tune – which drove us to hook  up with her for a session. Watch above and there’s more music over on her soundcloud. You can also catch her live at London’s Hoxton Bar and Kitchen tonight alongside Bebe Black and Ryan Keen.

French actress, model and singer-songwriter, Lou Doillon is a versatile character.

Set to release her debut record Places this April, Doillon follows in the footsteps of half-sister Charlotte Gainsbourg (actress and ‘Je T’Aime‘ co-vocalist Jane Birkin is their mom) with a sound that’s as alluring as it is inventive. Doillon drops an EP this month ahead of Places and Best Fit met her last week for a rendition of a new track ‘Make A Sound’.

With their third long player Holy Fire, Oxford’s Foals have proven themselves a worthy addition to the vanguard for forward-looking British guitar music. The record’s netted almost unanimous praise and marks a formidable maturing for the band.

The Best Fit team spent last Monday holed up in an warehouse with Yannis and co, who turned in the tender album closer ‘Moon’ for a thrilling session.

Foals tour the UK throughout March, concluding with two shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall on 28th.

Having released her latest and ninth studio album How About I Be Me (And You Be You) last year, Dublin native Sinéad O’ Connor took time out from her recent tour to perform a raw and stripped back version of ’Reason With Me’ for Best Fit.

John Fullbright hails from the same town (Okemah, Oklahoma) as the great Woody Guthrie and was a surprise nomination at this year’s Grammys for Best Americana Record, nestling alongside Bonnie Raitt, the Avett Brothers, Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers.

The 24-year old singer-songwriter started making music after dropping out of school and on the independently-produced debut album, From the Ground Up, he offers a unique talent for guitar as well as a lyrical sophistication that both intrigues and entertains.

We met up with Fullbright earlier this month during his first UK dates and cut an incredible one-take Best Fit Session of the biblical-referencing ‘Jericho’.

We’ve been nothing but outright impressed by the second long player from Manchester quartet Everything Everything.

Arc achieves the double whammy of being both a cohesive sequel to Man Alive – offering strong, progressive songwriting- and a fine flag-flyer for 21st century British music. Above all, it’s an album full of killer singles and ‘Duet’ is our favourite so far.

Best Fit met the band late last month at London’s Red Bull Studios, where we captured the track in its full glory.

‘Duet’ is out on 24 March via RCA Victor and you can stream it here. Everything Everything play a (sold out) UK tour throughout this month before heading over to Europe for several dates in March. More details on the band’s website or twitter.

In Pedestrian Verse, Scotland’s Frightened Rabbit have created not only one of the best records you’ll hear this year but a strong contender for the best British rock record for quite some time.

Trumping the odds of bands who get picked up mid-career by a major label, they haven’t compromised anything (as our reviewer pointed out, Scott Hutchison’s first words on the record are “I am that dickhead in the kitchen”). We caught up with them last month for a stripped back take on one of Pedestrian Verse‘s strongest tracks, ‘Backyard Skulls’.

Also check out the other song that the guys performed for us – an incredible version of the late-2012 single ‘The Woodpile’.

Dublin’s Little Green Cars have had a relatively upbeat last six months: a well received debut single ‘John Wayne’ marked their signing to Island Records while a placing on the BBC Sound of 2013 longlist gave them a healthy boost in visibility and a good start to the year.

We caught the band playing a hometown show back in the Autumn and it convinced us enough to place them on our Best Fit Ones To Watch list for the coming year. We’re still pretty sure 2013 will see them ascend very quickly in the collective musical consciousness too and new single ‘Harper Lee’ solidifies that status. Check out their amazing session above and get very excited about the debut album Absolute Zero, which drops on 13 May in the UK and 26 April in Ireland.

Little Green Cars tour throughout February and March before heading off to the US.

February

5 – O2 Academy, Newcastle
7 – HMV Picture House, Edinburgh
8 – O2 Academy, Glasgow
26 – Hoxton Hall London
27 – Soup Kitchen, Manchester
28 – The Louisiana, Bristol

March

8 – Button Factory, Dublin

Another case against the ‘guitar music is dead‘ mantra that we’re truly sick to the back teeth of hearing right now, Night Engine are here with a slick, very British take on hook-laden art pop.

The four piece have barely played any shows, they all still have day jobs and yet The Guardian tipped them as one of a five bands to watch in 2013 along with Laura Mvula, AlunaGeorge, Scrufizzer and Charli XCX.

The band’s debut ‘Seventeen’ come out on 18 February via Demand Vinyl (pre-order it here); we met them at a West London studio by the Thames for a remarkably transformed take on the song (which you can check out here for comparison).

The band tour the UK throughout February and March – full dates below.

February

11 – The Sands, Carlisle (w/ Kaiser Chiefs)
12 – Barrowlands, Glasgow (w/ Kaiser Chiefs)
14 – Alhambra, Dunfermline (w/ Kaiser Chiefs)
15 – Apollo, Manchester (w/ Kaiser Chiefs)
16 – Spa, Bridlington (w/ Kaiser Chiefs)
18 – Academy, Newcastle Upon Tyne (w/ Kaiser Chiefs)
19 – Guild Hall, Preston (w/ Kaiser Chiefs)
20 – Borderline, London

March

04 – Concorde 2, Brighton (w/ The Joy Formidable)
05 – Phoenix, Exeter (w/ The Joy Formidable)
06 – Wedgewood, Portsmouth (w/ The Joy Formidable)
08 – Roundhouse, London (w/ The Joy Formidable)

The poster boy of Blessing Force’s more experimental side, Hugo Manuel’s tenure as Chad Valley saw its first long-playing fruit with last year’s Young Hunger.

The record – like many released in 2012 from a cluster of artists around the world lumped with the chillwave tag – transcended Manuel’s earlier EPs, with a far more lush and energized sound as well as some interesting collaborations from the likes of TEED‘s Orlando Higginbottom and Fixers‘ Jack Goldstein.

We met Hugo before Christmas at South London’s Red Bull Studios, Hugo cut a smooth and remarkably stripped back take on November’s single ‘Tell All Your Friends’.

This coming month sees the long-awaited new record from Calgary’s Woodpigeon, the collective centred around singer-songwriter Mark Andrew Hamilton.

Hamilton’s somber folk-pop sound has slowly evolved across nearly seven years of making music and Thumbtacks and Glue is as heart-wrenching and soul nourishing as you’d expect. We met up with Hamilton during last year’s Airwaves Festival in Reykjavik, Iceland, where we bluffed our way into the backstage of the biggest arts venue in the country, Harpa, and sought out a lone corridor for a Best Fit Session. Amid the Iceland Symphony Orchestra’s packing cases, Hamilton gave us the hazy ‘Oberkampf’.

Woodpigeon heads to the UK at the end of February to support  Mark Eitzel in Glasgow, Hebden Bridge, Manchester, and Bristol before headlining a sold out show at St Pancras Old Church on 4 March. Full dates are below:

February

27 Feb – Glasgow at Oran Mor w/ Mark Eitzel

March

1 Mar – Hebden Bridge at The Trades Club w/ Mark Eitzel
2 Mar – Manchester at Night & Day w/ Mark Eitzel
3 Mar – Bristol at The Fleece w/ Mark Eitzel
4 Mar – St Pancras Old Church, London with support from Collectress (Sold Out)
5 Mar – Rough Trade West, London (6pm)
6 Mar – St.Stephen’s Church, Bournemouth
7 Mar – The Hope, Brightob

‘Thumbtacks & Glue, Woodpigeon’s fifth full-length album, drops on 25 February via Fierce Panda.

Channelling the great gruff and weathered vocalists we know and love (Cash, Waits, Cave) and wearing the visage of a young Joe Strummer, former Loverman vocalist Gabriel Bruce is set to rise in this coming year, with his debut Love in Arms due for a release next month.

We met Bruce a few weeks back and he talked of the opportunities afforded to his status as a solo artist that just weren’t on the table during his Loverman time. “I couldn’t see past the image we’d created and I think maybe it was those constrictions that suffocated the band,” he explained.

Watch out Gabriel’s Best Fit Session – a haunting take of new single ‘Cars Not Leaving’ – above.

‘Cars Not Leaving’ is released on 11 March and you can listen to the it streaming over on Dummy. Love in Arms  is released on 11 February.

He’s a household name in his native country but Matthieu Chedid – better known by his reductive initial stage name -M- isn’t so famous elsewhere.

Since collaborating with Vanessa Paradis, -M-‘s fame has steadily grown in France. He regularly sells out spectacular shows where his guitar-playing skills and stage presence shine through.

We caught a more laid back side of him in over at Eurosonic a few weeks back,  he performed ‘Océan’ for us – a song dedicated to the late DJ Mehdi.

In the week that his new album Secret Soundz Vol 2 drops, here’s the second of our hookups with The Pictish Trail (aka Johnny Lynch) at last years’s End of the Road Festival.

Sometime around midnight, we arranged a rendezvous with the plucky Scot and he brought along a bunch of friends with him too – various members of Francois & the Atlas Mountains, Eagleowl and Rozi Plain. Alcohol had flowed freely for most of the evening and after a splendid take of ‘Not To Be’, Johnny gave us a track from the new record, ‘Michael Rocket’ – with a little tribute to Madonna thrown in for good measure.

It’s to Frightened Rabbit‘s credit that they’ve made it to album number four very much on their own terms.

Signing to a major label for their new record might have set alarm bells ringing but they’re in good company on the Warner-owned Atlantic Records with the likes of Charli XCX, Lykke Li, Matt Corby and The Staves. The Scottish band’s approach to music, performance and celebrity has seen them apply a distinctly proletariat approach to rock music that’s recognisable in every step of their career.

Pedestrian Verse is one of the albums we’re most excited about this year and it might even be the best British made rock record we’ve heard in a very long time. We met up with frontman Scott last week in London for an acoustic session; he gave us recent single ‘The Woodpile’.

Pedestrian Verse, the fourth studio album by Frightend Rabbit, is released in UK and Europe on 4 Februay, via Atlantic.

Denmark’s a cool bed of talent these days. Just think of the jaw-dropping harmonies of The White Album or the challenging future-pop of MØ. Building on a inventive homegrown scene, girl trio Nelson Can come to us as an exquisite, fully formed proposition.

Fronted by Selina Gin on vocals, bassist Signe SigneSigne and drummer Maria Juntmen, the three Danes might be mining similar territory to Deap Valley and show buddies The Black Keys but there’s an elegance, playfulness and a certain Scandinavian slant that sets them apart far enough to carve out a space entirely for themselves. And we haven’t even talked about the lack of six strings – it’s just bass, vocals and voices. Nothing more.

Since their debut EP at the beginning of last year, the girls have kicked up a storm in all the right places and it was at the Eurosonic showcase in the Netherlands where we caught up with them for a Best Fit Session. Filmed at the top of a car-park in Groningen, this (slightly) stripped back take on their stomping signature tune ‘People’s Republic Of China’ condenses everything we love about them into three-and-a-bit glorious minutes.

Nelson Can tour around Europe in February and March and are due to come to the UK with dates to be announced soon.

One of a handful of truly innovate songwriters working with the British folk template today, Kate Stables continues to push the envelope with her solo project This is the Kit.

Sharon Van Etten and The National are among Kate’s fans, with the latter hand-picking Kate for Autumn’s ATP. We caught up with her at Westminster Reference Library in London’s West End for an exclusive session take of ‘All Written Out In Numbers’.

Special thanks to Westminster Reference Library and Rosella Black – find out more about events at the library.

The second of our sessions with LA-based four piece Electric Guest drops today, following their incredible take on ‘Amber’ which we debuted in the Autumn last year.

Mondo, the band’s first (Dangermouse-produced) record, was one of the unsung highlights of 2012 and we’re expecting great things from the band in the coming year.

The productivity of Iceland’s Sindri Már Sigfússon knows no bounds. As the founding force behind the mighty Seabear, he was named the ‘Icelandic Beck’ by Rolling Stone and his most recent project Sin Fang exposed us to even greater depths of musical invention, lyrical tenderness and creative gold.

During Best Fit’s time in Icelandic for the annual Airwaves festival last November, we caught up with Sindri in Reykjavik. While a hurricane raged way above, we sealed ourselves in Sindri’s basement studio for a take of ‘Look At The Light’, from Sin Fang’s third solo album Flowers which gets a worldwide release on 18 January via Morr Music.

Iceland Airwaves 2013 takes place from 30 October – 3 November. Early bird tickets are now available.

Amidst a wind-engulfed Reykjavik during this year’s Airwaves festival, it was a small miracle to find a place of peace – but we did, in the home of Icelandic folk duo Pascal Pinon.

Twin sisters Jofridur and Asthildur were entertaining a group of Japanese visitors but let the Best Fit Sessions team wander freely amongst heart-shaped biscuits and Moomin mugs. Their remaining siblings stepped up to help with a special family performance of ‘Somewhere’, taken from their upcoming second album Twosomeness, released on 18 January via Morr Music.

Iceland Airwaves 2013 takes place from 30 Oct – 3 Nov next year. Early bird tickets are now available.

While they were in town back in the summer for the Best Fit tour, our sessions team spent some time holed up with Swedish trio Simian Ghost.

As well as turning the warmingly-sweet Curtain Call, they also gave us another treat that we’ve been holding back for just the right moment.

Taken from Stevie Nicks‘ 1983 album of the same name, the original version of ‘Wild Heart’ find the Fleetwood Mac woman embracing full-on MOR lustre with very distinct traces of her other band’s sound. The SG boys turn in a more concise cover that amps up the melancholy via frontman Sebastian Arnström’s mournful vocal leanings.

Having released their stunning record Take It Personal via Something In Construction in October, Norwegian trio Philco Fiction were kind enough to pop along to our little session stage at Iceland Airwaves to perform album highlight ‘Portrait of Silence.’

The honour of being invited to Ólafur Arnalds‘ studio during Best Fit’s time in Iceland for the annual Airwaves Festival was the icing on a very wonderful – but very cold and windy – cake.

While Hurricane Leslie raged outside, Arnalds broke in his brand new piano for us, accompanied by cello for the stirring classic ‘Undun Hulu’, which has been floating around the web since 2007 and finally found a home on the 2010 album …and they have escaped the weight of darkness.

Iceland Airwaves 2013 takes place from 30 Oct – 3 Nov next year. Early bird tickets are now available.

North Carolina’s Crooked Fingers – led by Archers of Loaf man Eric Bachmann – popped over last week to play some shows. 

We caught him with Liz Durrett in a basement corridor, where they played a raw version of ‘Your Control’, taken from the 2009 eponymous EP.

We struggle to come up with an accurate description of Hey Sholay, so we’re gonna steal one from the excellent Drowned in Sound, who tagged them as “a band of irreconcilable contradictions”.

The Sheffield/Leeds five piece, currently riding high on the release of strong debut ((O)) and fresh from a tour with Fierce Panda-label mates The Crookes, make ambitious music which should (and probably will) project them to greater things in due course. Big choruses dominate but their own unique brand of psych-tinged pop sets them apart from their peers. Best Fit met them earlier this month for a nicely-done session take on ‘Shut The Devil At The Backdoor’.

Hey Sholay play London’s Hoxton Bar & Kitchen on 12 December.

We caught up with Deerhunter‘s darling Lockett Pundt for an atmospheric rendition of Black Buzz, last track on his latest album (Spooky Action At A Distance) under his solo project Lotus Plaza.

The Line Of Best Fit caught up with H. Hawkline for a sweet rendition of the title track from his recent Black Domino Box EP in a moment of calm before a raucous show at the London Palladium, as part of Idle Fret‘s five week residency. In town fresh from his month long US tour of duty playing in Cate Le Bon‘s band, she returned the favour for this session along with long time collaborator Sweet Baboo.

Love for the valium crunching Cardiff crooner has been steadily building for some time, but he switched things up a gear in August with the release of the EP at the end of August. Co-produced by Gruff Rhys and released on the superb Trash Aesthetics label (Richmond Fontaine, Chuck Prophet) the EP sees H. Hawkline contrasting the gentler strummings of previous release with a janglier, scuzz-psych sound.

Lyrically, Hawkline channels his idol Richard Brautigan through a rough cement mixture of sludge rock, felt and seaweed, listing his possessions in his rented room in this poignant appraisal of a dispossessed generation of multi-tasking, rarely paid young musicians.

Dublin five piece Little Green Cars are still in their teens but their brand of cosmic Americana is just the thing to restore your faith in young people messing with a country sound.

After dropping their debut single on Young and Lost Club back in June, Stevie, Faye, Donagh, Adam and Dylan are now signed to Island and this month sees them re-releasing that track  song as their major label debut. ‘The John Wayne’ showcases some impressive harmonies and a confidence we’ve not seen for a long time in a band so early into their career. The Guardian called them “a Cranberries for Brooklyn Veganites” but they have a guts and talent to to pack more punch than that.

Best Fit Sessions caught up with the cheeky scallys last week for an incredible performance of ‘The John Wayne’ (a song that we can’t get out of our heads, incidentally).

Sara Lucas and Ryan Seaton, better known as Callers, make the kind of darting, translucent jagged pop we’ve come to expect from the melting pot-borough.

They were in town last month to support their neighbours Dirty Projectors at their London show and we caught up with them a few hours prior for a remarkable performance of ‘It’s A Ringer’ taken from their upcoming new record Reviver.

The last of our sessions filmed at this year’s End of the Road Festival brings former Capitol Years man Shai Halperin – now operating under the Sweet Lights moniker – for a quick backstage (or rather backfield) take on ‘Endless Town’.

If you’ve missed any of our sessions from End of the Road, check out our YouTube playlist.

Electric Guest come to us with an incredible pedigree; a Danger Mouse produced debut album (Mondo), a familial link to SNL alumni The Lonely Island (and a songwriting credit on a certain comic song we’ve all grown to love) and – most importantly, a songwriting finesse that blends modern indie pop with a informed blast of 70s MOR.

We met the LA boys last month and took them aside for a Best Fit Session – you can watch Amber above and we’ll be dropping the awesome ‘This Head I Hold’ later this week. Stay tuned.

As as 13 year old, the girl formerly known as Nicole Shortland signed to Mercury Records as one third of SoundGirl, but now at 17 she’s set to send your pop-jaws dropping. 

The Huffington Post has tagged Little Nikki as Britain’s answer to Rihanna and Popjustice added an Azealia Banks comparison to the mix. We fell head over heels for her after the grand pop sound of ‘Intro Intro‘ dropped like a mega-ton on our inboxes a few months back – so much that we hounded Nikki for the chance to make her first ever session.

‘Intro Intro’ drops next Monday (5 November) but here’s a more stripped down take that shows just how much talent this London girl has going on.

It’s fair to say that Ethan Johns holds a special place in the hearts of many of us Best Fit folk as as the visionary who breathed life into some of our favourite records – among them  Ryan Adams‘ Heartbreaker, Gold and 29, Kings of Leon‘s Youth and Young Manhood, Whiskeytown‘s Pneumonia and The Jayhawks‘ Rainy Day Music.

As a singer-songwriter, he’s anything but prolific. His new record – the first he’s put out in two decades – sees a unique talent for song-writing emerge. If Not Now Then When? finds Johns melding English folk influences to more modern song structures and the result is a both beautifully melodic and fascinatingly  humble. Johns’ father Glyn takes over mixing duties on the  album, which features the likes of Laura Marling, Ryan Adams and Danny Thompson – an indication of how both influence and working relationship can be successfully integrated in creating new music.

We took Johns to London’s Red Bull Studios for his Best Fit Session and cut three tracks – the first of which we’re presenting to you is ‘Hello Sunshine’. The new record If Not Now Then When? is released on 5 November. Johns plays a London show this month before embarking on a UK record store tour throughout November – dates below.

October

29 – London St. Pancras Old Church

November

5 – Cardiff Spillers
6 -Bristol Rise Music
8 – London Rough Trade West
9 – Kingston Banquet Records 
10 – Lewes Union Record Store 
12 – Worcester Rise Music 
13 – Cheltenham Rise Music 
16 – Marlborough Sound Knowledge 
17 – Oxford Truck Records 
19 – Letchworth David’s Music 
21 – Liverpool The Music Consortium 
22 – Newcastle RPM 
23 – Glasgow Love Music 
24 – Stockton-on-Tees Sound It Out 
27 – Wimborne Square Records 
28  - Totnes The Drift Record Store 
29 – Newton Abbot Phoenix Sounds 
30 – Barnstable Solo 

Many thanks to Red Bull Studios.