Kevin Bronson on May 30th, 2013

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On the surface, there’s not very much folk about Grizfolk, the L.A. trio that for a time was going by the name Griz Adams until, one imagines, they got a threatening note carved in tree bark from a mountain man. There is, however, a whole lot that’s familiar about the first two songs from Adam Roth, Sebastian Fritze and Fredrik Eriksson – edgy synth-and-guitar tones, four-on-the-floor beats, tasty hooks, all of which ostensibly sprang from the seeds of Americana. The songs began with the transcontinental vision of Roth, a Florida native who was playing in the band La Vie, and Eriksson, a Swede who had joined Roth as a production duo working on songs for film and TV. Swedish pop and American folk might make for strange bedfellows, especially if you suspect the production guts whatever soul the song had, but bands like DWNTWN have molded electro and folk into some undeniably catchy tracks. An EP of Grizfolk’s earworms is due later this year.

||| Download: “The Struggle” (limited time)

||| Stream: “Hymnals”

||| Live: Grizfolk plays It’s a School Night at Bardot on Monday.