Holy Motors

HOLY MOTORS is a Tallinn, Estonia based dark twang & reverb band from a nonexistent movie. It bows to engines and echos and film-directors. Cinematic suspension is often more than not what drives the band towards a melody and meaning. (bandcamp)

Though their music has often been tied to American roots music, Holy Motors were formed in Tallinn, Estonia in 2013, when founding member Lauri Raus (songwriter/guitar) recruited Eliann Tulve to join the band as songwriter and lead vocalist. With Tulve’s gorgeously foreboding vocals serving as a ballast for the guitar section’s “infinity-pool-style shimmer” (Pitchfork) the band quickly became as un-ignorable as they were inscrutable.

2018 saw the band release their critically acclaimed debut LP, Slow Sundown, which won them praise from Stereogum (Album of the Week), Bandcamp (Album of the Day) and DIY (Neu Pick) to name a few. They even landed on one of their very own idols’s radar - Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre - who went on to work closely with the band in 2019.

Since then Holy Motors' incongruence has only grown all the more prevalent and endearing. They remain musicians from an ex-Soviet country who write songs that have been described as “shoegaze that sounds like the old West” (The Fader).The resulting mystique, paired with their ability to write lyrics and music that resonate with a deeply relatable feeling of isolation, has allowed their music to connect with people from devoted shoegaze and western psychedelia fanatics to dreamer cowboys, driving through wide open country roads under the stars.

Their second album Horse will land 10/16/2020 via Wharf Cat Records. (spotify)