This week, we’ll do some mellow folk and fuzzy beach rock from the UK, a bit of indie goodness from the midwest, a beaut of an acoustic folk song care of Pennsylvania, some Canadian protest music, and a pair of quality sad bastard songs.

Happy(ish) Monday.

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Best Friends – Dr. Mario
British lo-fi garage rock, with a bit of a beach vibe. Good stuff.

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Jasper Storey – Monday Morning
This laid-back tune from across the pond is a good way to start any morning. Buy this fella’s debut EP right here.

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Saintseneca – Sleeper Hold
Here’s some upbeat indie rock with male/female harmonies and minor chords aplenty, care of Columbus, Ohio. The band’s new album, Such Things, was just released earlier this month.

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Tapestries – Colliding
Tapestries is a Pennsylvania-based indie folk trio who just released their first single — a serene, breezy, and all-around great acoustic song called “Colliding”. Think Gregory Alan Isakov meets the Head & the Heart.

Word on the street is that they’re working on their debut EP right now. (And in this case, “word on the street” came via correspondence with one of the band members, so it should be fairly reliable.)

More to come, and hopefully soon.

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Hey Rosetta! & Yukon Blonde – Land You Love
This is a one-off song written in anticipation of the Canadian federal election, which is tomorrow. Hey Rosetta! and Yukon Blonde are two Canadian bands well worth checking out.

Canada: Where even the protest songs are polite.

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Josh Ritter – The Stone
Here’s Josh Ritter performing a live acoustic version of a song from his recent (super-duper-outstanding) release, Sermon on the Rocks.

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Noah Gundersen – Slow Dancer (live @ KEXP)
Noah Gundersen: still a great songwriter, and now finally getting some well-deserved  national attention for it. His newest album, Carry the Ghost, was released a couple months ago.

You can preview and purchase it right here.

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Jamie Lawson – Wasn’t Expecting That
Some folks argue that the music video as a medium of art is essentially dead; that we’ve seen every trick and every story and every camera angle to such an extent that videos can’t do their job of eliciting emotion and supplementing songs anymore.

Well then, let us present the following as Exhibit A in The Case For the Continued Creation of Music Videos. No spoilers – just watch. It’s a good one.

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Until next week, cheers.