Over Sea, Under Stone, Demonstration

This Houston band’s three-song EP teems with with understated vocals, breakbeats, and airy synths, music that defies genres and comes across as completely original — something almost unheard of these days. The band claims they “deliver lyrics with swaggering literate wit and quiet sincerity,” and the songs on their EP back it up.

Lyrically, the album is as diverse as the band’s music. On “Half Life,” Kegan Heiss sings, “It’s taken half my life just to see these things / Now in looking back, my vision clouds.” He takes a slightly different turn on “Complete”: “If I had been raised on Wordsworth, perhaps my mouth wouldn’t taste like television…that’s wishful thinking.” While Over Sea, Under Stone’s music is reason enough to like the band, lyrics like the hilarious “Counting the merries in your go-around” (from the EP’s cerebral “Tincture of Clarity”) have my vote for lyrics of the year. While it might take a while for Houston’s masses to catch on to Over Sea, Under Stone’s unique offerings, they are definitely one of the most original bands to appear on the local scene in a while.