Menacingly sincere love letters for a post-romantic age. A sweetly vicious debut way beyond the years of its youthful creators (they’re 19!), this album tears apart music and stitches it back together with minimal guitar lines, droopy, low-end beats and cautious dual boy-girl vocals. It is one of the best of 2009, and a debut at that! Can’t not.

They’re on Young Turks/XL, the former is also home to Tanlines, which has nothing to do with the xx but is equally as cool. Check out their Myspace, where they’re friends with another UK prodigy, Micachu!

Best tracks: VCR, Crystalised, Islands, Basic Space, Heart Skipped A Beat

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I think the FACT Magazine review of this should suffice as a description: Something Asa Breed-style Matthew Dear would make after a 10 year addiction to downers.

This is a hauntingly minimal, post-dance meditation on the aftermath by Canadian Jeremy Shaw. It’ll make you just sit and think, but when you get up you still won’t be able to get it out of your head.

This album is so grotesquely understated it’ll make you silently scream.

and also the cover’s in 3d, apparently.

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