We’ve always found the music of Little Dragon to be funky fresh, but the Swedish four piece hits new highs on the band’s recently released Machine Dreams, one of the albums of the year.  Little Dragon have always had a soulful element thanks to the distinctively elastic vocals of singer Yukimi Nagano, but true to its title, Machine Dreams creatively plays with the intersection of pop and technology, whimsically splitting the difference between retro and futurist.

As such, Little Dragon fill their grooves with electro-funk beats, ‘80s synth-pop robot-friendly electronic drums and the like, all while maintaining an organic presence that could only be human. The standout track from Machine Dreams, “Blinking Pigs” perfectly represents this vibe. Nagano strikes a sweetly melancholic yet sexily romantic tone, singing lines like “Now that you’re standing closer, now I don’t want to run – I don’t want to leave” over a sonic tapestry that simultaneously evokes Missing Persons, Kraftwerk, Bjork, Underworld, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and now. It’s a hootenanny unlike any other, time travelling from the past into today on a spaceship carrying both fun and emotion – blink and you’ll miss it…