First Aid Kit - Drunken Trees EP

Those Swedes have got it together. Apart from weathering economic armageddon quite comfortably, they're also pumping out spine-tingling pop (The Knife), phenomenally bleak ambient music (The Library Tapes, Jasper TX), and nostalgic indie (Peter, Bjorn and John, Jens Lenkman). The latest genre for them to master is alt-country, as illustrated by the hideously talented First Aid Kit. With a combined age of just 33, Klara and Johanna Sorderberg, on first impressions, seem to be mining the same vein of music as Joanna Newsom. Newsom, though, tends to bat her eyelids and play on her impishness; these two have world-weary voices far beyond their years, in the same way that Dylan did when he was 21 and pumping out A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall. An understated acoustic gem. [Ewen Millar]