&Tilly is a duo out of Prague that describes their music on their website as “Sung Poetry & Poetic Indie & New Folk & Ambient Pop & Alternative & Dreampop ?? you never know”, which, ampersands aside, seems both overly broad and extemely specific. Read it carefully and you have a pretty good idea what you’re about to get into. They hit my radar last week with this cover of Placebo’s “Sleeping With Ghosts”:

It’s a fantastic cover and does all the things it’s supposed to do. &tilly reinvents the song in their trip-hop style, reinterpreting the original bassline as a keyboard riff, making the song fully their own. It’s a haunting and memorable version of a great song. The video matches the song’s moodiness.

&tilly released a couple of albums in 2022, and an album’s worth of songs in the past 12 months. They seem to have found their style: melodic midtempo trip-hop influenced indie pop (I guess), with hushed vocals, as delicate as a snowflake. It’s similar in tone to the recent records from Julia-Sophie and Thomas Powers – calm, meditative, and sophisticated.

Here’s “Silencing”, from March. It was a collaboration with a DC-based producer who goes by Blaudiss. It’s hypnotic, intimate and introspective.

I think my favourite track is “Thieves”. Strings add depth to the soft vocal. Tilly’s voice is fragile and unforgettable, and the tone shift at the 1:40 mark of the song is brilliant:

Lastly, one more cover, this time of “Hurt”. At this point, that song is as radioactive to cover as “Hallelujah“, but &tilly seems to have eschewed the flawless Johnny Cash version for a more direct cover of Trent Reznor’s original, and it works extremely well. Her shaky, hushed vocal suits the sinister, somber mood of the backing tracks, bringing melody and introspection in place of Reznor’s barely contained fury.

THERE IS SO MUCH MORE: On their website, &tilly build a page for each song, with notes about it — sometimes a sentence, sometimes a paragraph. On the page for “Hurt”, there’s this:

When we revealed we were working on our own rendition, we ended up playing our (at that time unfinished) track for our colleagues. The moment a guy from nearby office rushed in, frantically Shazaming, we knew we were onto something.

What’s more about the website: Almost every song has a proper music video. A conceived, storyboarded, produced, polished video. It’s amazing. Several songs on that website aren’t collected in album format on streaming – including the excellent 3am Lullaby, Dawn, Grey Wide World, Her, Higher than Earth… forget it. I’ve made a playlist of my &tilly favourites, and here it is (apple music, spotify). Play it and love it.

&tilly is truly doing something special and I can’t wait to hear more.

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