Andy Fenstermaker is a music lover, writer, marketing professional, and entrepreneur who has dedicated his life to sharing his passion for music with others. He is the founder of FensePost, a renowned music blog that has been sharing the latest and greatest in indie music since 2006. Andy has always been fascinated by the power of music to connect people, and he started FensePost with the aim of sharing his love of music with others. Andy developed a passion for music at a young age. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Andy grew up surrounded by a vibrant music scene that left an indelible mark on him. He attended Washington State University, where he studied Communication and Business. He holds a BA in Communication and a Masters in Business Administration. After graduating, Andy started writing about music and created FensePost as the outlet. The blog has a strong focus on indie music, but also covers a range of other genres including folk, indie pop, psychedelic, garage rock, and experimental. Andy and the blog relocated to the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex in 2020.
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Madam Owl is the title of the new album by Jeff Hanson (MySpace), out now on Kill Rock Stars, and it’s quite a change from Son and his self-titled release. Overall, Hanson departs from folk and dives headlong into pop. However, that’s not the biggest change on Madam Owl… no, it’s the addition of orchestration that really sets this album apart from his prior catalog. Read More »Jeff Hanson: If I Only Knew [Video]
Do you ever pick up an album and have trouble making it past the first two songs? (You may think, by reading this question, that I am referencing an album so awful that you simply pull it from your CD player. However, this question is posed in a different light—the album begins so strongly with such great songs that it takes ages to really get past those first few due to your continually hitting the REPEAT button.) So have you? I have—and the latest to succumb to the curse is the latest by The Little Ones (MySpace), Morning Tide. Read More »The Little Ones: Morning Tide [Album Review]
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This may be a stretch, but Mary Lorson’s vocals remind me of the softer side of Saint Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell. At times. They are pleasantly romantic and have that wonderful European sound. But The Piano Creeps are from New York. And their music quite different—it is always soft and fairly minimal. Read More »The Piano Creeps: Hey Love [Video]
Oh yes, now Celestial has several traits of the typical Swedish pop band. There’s the lovely indie pop guitar sound that shows The Smiths as a key influence. There’s the bouncy, yet emotive vocals—here female fronted. (That woman is Malin Dahlberg, perhaps more well known for her work in Douglas Music and Laurel Music.) And, it sounds like Swedish pop, a sub genre that sometimes can be fairly homogeneous.
Read More »Celestial: Crystal Heights [Album Review] 
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Silje Nes is a Norwegian artist whose songs are masqueraded as minimal pop gems. Her voice is high pitched and sometimes childish, but the music she makes displays an inherent knowledge of songcraft, from the experimental “Over All†to the softly romantic “Drownâ€. Read More »Silje Nes [Feature Band]
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The Flying Tourbillon Orchestra, or TFTO, is a spacey group with catchy vocal phrases, oft male/female dual harmonic vocals, and great instrumental breakdowns. In some ways, it reminds me of A Certain Feeling by Bodies Of Water—another phenom from 2008—but without sheer emotive darkness. Read More »The Flying Tourbillon Orchestra: In A Dream [Video]
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Oh I like this video. It’s a bit of a departure from Fleet Foxes’ first video, “White Winter Hymnalâ€, but it’s just as good. The video displays perfectly the group’s ability to construct multiple-part vocal harmonies, and emphasizes the band’s folk-rock sensibilities. If you’re new to Fleet Foxes, you’re in for a treat; if you’re an old hand at their music, you pretty much know what to expect. Either way, the video is worth it. Read More »Fleet Foxes: He Doesn’t Know Why [Video]
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A comfort band is one that you can return to at any time and any place and still enjoy; the true comfort band typically falls into a categorization that includes some all-time favorite albums and groups that make top personal end of year charts. Their songs have that certain something—a connection—that is, if nothing else, comforting. Grand Archives (MySpace) is such a band for me. Read More »Grand Archives: Miniature Birds [Video]
One of my earliest forays into Swedish pop, which has come to dominate my musical obsession over the past few years, was my introduction to The Legends. The band consists of Johan Angergård, a key mastermind behind Acid House Kings and Club 8. Each new album by The Legends takes the band in a slightly new direction; with each release, the listener is treated to something completely new.
Read More »The Legends [Feature Band] 
I was initially confounded by Darker My Love (MySpace). Many songs off their sophomore release, aptly titled 2, have the indie pop sound, but the strength behind guitars is quite a bit heavier than your typical “indie pop†band. Then I thought, Well wouldn’t that mean the band fits Power Pop? Granted, power pop is a heavier sounding indie pop, but even that doesn’t fit. For one, there’s too much drone. Then there’s a hefty element of psychedelic rock, and massive traces of shoegaze. Read More »Darker My Love [Feature Band]
