Sugar Free Records
Sugar Free Records is run by a triumvirate headquartered in Boston, Chicago and NYC. These guys have the industry knowledge to compete with major labels, but they maintain the artistic freedoms and scruples of the underground. Started in 1996, the label leapt to the forefront of the music biz with a hearty dose of artists in the singer-songwriter and indie pop vein.
Birddog
Singer-songwriter Bill Santen's band Birddog plays stripped-down song-oriented acoustic music that drifts and whispers across a wide array of musical boundaries. It's a melancholy, impressionistic, very American sound that seems to speak of a history of hot winds and dusty crops and tired families on the move.
Ghost of the Season
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1998
Elf Power
Take a journey into Hobbit-land, where the little people reign supreme, and all is mystical and surreal -- and do so in delightfully retro-flavored, E6 fuzz-pop style.
The Winter Is Coming
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2000
Family Of God
Family of God makes heady, ambient pop that is kaleidoscopic and slightly intoxicating in the range of its sound. Call it "mystic disco" -- they do. Fans of The Church and Echo and the Bunnymen will love this band's brilliant, densely woven sound.
We Are the World
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1998
Exiter
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2000
Jack Drag
Ready for some real strange sweetness? Jack Drag creates damaged power pop -- glossy, gorgeous stuff full of off-kilter beats and samples. It takes a little getting used to, but it's well worth it.
Soft Songs LP: Aviation
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2000
Jon Langford
Longtime Mekons frontman Jon Langford goes solo for the first time in his career with a collection of hard, angry rockers full of intelligent verbosity and trilled rs. He's turning his attention to the gritty underbelly of both America and his homeland of Wales, and what he sees ain't pretty.
Skull Orchard
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1998
Wheat
Incredibly lovely indie pop, like deep space stripped down to a star or two. Wheat wanders slowly across the spectrum of indie genres, from ambient pop to lo-fi folk to shoegazer, cloaking every song in a bittersweet haze.
Medeiros
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1998
Hope and Adams
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1999
Holiday Matinee, Volume 2
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2000
