The Witzard

While I've never really been a humongous (read: "huge") Band of Horses fan, I can still however, respect their niche singer-songwriter aesthetic, and I can still remember the first time I heard their flawless modern day Folk-Indie Rock "power-ballad," "The Funeral:" on an episode of MTV 's ill-fated pseudo-reality series, My Life As Liz , which Kid Cudi would later go on to expertly sample and rhyme atop on his A Kid Named Cudi mixtape. Around the same time, I can also recall first hearing soft-spoken bearded singer-songwriter, Iron & Wine aka Sam Beam 's critically-acclaimed mariachi-tinged In The Reins EP (2005) recoded with Tex-Mex Indie Folk band, Calexico ; Iron & Wine would gain wide-spread notoriety with his stripped down cover of The Postal Service 's "Such Great Heights" that would go on to appear on both the Garden State soundtrack and within a kaleidoscopic M&M's commercial . "I did a r...

"[ Bon Iver 's] a fucking genius! I'd never seen nor heard of him in my life, and I looked up, and I was in a fucking 5 x 5 room with a white guy, smoking weed... and his voice is like something I've never heard, and he's using words that are far from common. Within 20 minutes, I realized why Kanye had him there." - Rick Ross (Billboard) Justin Vernon probably never imagined that his high-pitched primary band, Bon Iver would ever garner so much widespread acclaim, let alone 4 Grammy nominations. 2011 was quite arguably The Year of Bon Iver ; Over the course of the year, Vernon somehow managed to strike up a lucrative friendship with Kayne & Jay-Z , harmonize alongside Nicki Minaj , appear on Gayngs' remix album - "Affiliyated," collaborate with The National and Dub Master James Blake , and hawking Bushmills whiskey. On top of all that, his long-awaited follow-up album (Bon Iver, Bon Iver) was released on Jagjaguwar . That very album ...