The Avett Brothers

I really love these guys.  I got to see them from pretty close up two years ago when they played ACL, and their energy was off the charts.  My expectation - a relatively staid alt country concert with one guy plucking his banjo and another strumming his guitar - was blown out of the water.  They jumped around the stage, thrashing their banjo and wailing out their lyrics.  They had a stand-up bass player who was kicking around and flipping out like he had missed the memo that he was a refuge from the symphony.  They also made the boss-level move of inviting Chad Smith, the Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer, up to play a few songs with them.  He banged out a few songs like they were Uplift Mofo-era punk gems - it was serious fun.  With all of this history in mind, I am really looking forward to seeing them play.

As to the music, this is two brothers from North Carolina playing funky bluegrass folky music in a way that is terrifically accessible and loads of fun.  I first came to them through KGSR and the title track off of the "I and Love and You" from 2009.  This was a Rick Rubin-produced beauty that went to #16 on the annual best albums chart, #7 on the rock charts, and #1 in the folk charts, and got them slots on Letterman, Fallon, Kimmel, the Grammys, and Austin City Limits.  I and Love and You is a soft, wonderful love song:

Before I leave that first album, I think you also need to hear January Wedding, because it is another fantastic thing (although this is not the cleanest audio):

Their next album, 2012's The Carpenter was more of the same magic.  Some slow, harmonic alt-country tracks mixed among some happy banjo-fueled rockers.  One of those is Live and Die:

Which just makes me want to learn how to pluck a banjo or dance in a field of clover or pet a cat or something else weird.  The Carpenter's sessions produced a ton of good music, so pretty soon thereafter they released 2013's Magpie and the Dandelion.  The top two songs off of that album are Another is Waiting (with a video apparently about model culture and being too skinny?):

and Morning Song, another soft, harmonic gem, all about finding hope and getting over a loss:

There was a long article about them in Rolling Stone a few months ago that I enjoyed, it was just fun to know more about them and where they have come from.  And some tabloid-level gossip about one of the brothers dating the sister from Dexter (and potentially naming The Carpenter after her).  I think they are a great band and I really hope that I can go back and see these dudes play again.