Artist of the Week: Tennis

Maybe it's because I totally missed the wave along the Best Coast, or perhaps its because I was too afraid of falling even further in love with Zooey to dedicate myself to She & Him, but something about Tennis, the newest hype-hungry-too-cute-for-real-life duo out of Denver finally settles well with me. They have something that the other two lack: a story. It's not always fair to give a band extra points for a great personal narrative, but the urge to romanticize the process of music creation is hard to resist, and Tennis deliver on this front. The married couple saved up in order to buy a sail boat and set sail along the East Coast. They had no intention of creating an album along the way, but the endless amounts of free time that come with a sailor's life gave room for creativity, and the inspiration of 'Baby It's You,' by the Shirelles sparked a vicious bout of music making that manifests itself in these tracks. The songs aren't really about places, but about experiences. But since the experiences were so closely linked to their location at any given moment (sailing is an exercise in geography, after all) they wrote songs with titles like 'Baltimore,' and 'South Carolina.' It's infectious, cute, and intelligent. And if their forerunners are any indication, its gonna be big. Click Through to Listen to 'Marathon' !

Marathon by Tennis by igorgerman

Oh, and they got matching tattoos instead of wedding rings.