Calgary, Alberta Canada

Markus Overland is arguably Calgary's most underrated artist. Dude keeps making album after album, people keep not buying or talking about them. Stop it, will ya? Self-described as “sad bastard death folk,” but in reality a whole lot more wide-ranging than that label implies, Lucid 44 owes a lot to Sonic Youth's more krautische moments, with overtones of Native traditional music and Vic Chesnutt. Alternately mumbling and howling, twanging and grinding, this is intensely introverted and mysteriously pungent music.