Hometown: Denver, CO USA

A wholly unique mélange of Middle Eastern, Eastern European, and American Punk and Folk music, DeVotchKa truly has no musical peers. And while the band’s genre descriptors and untraditional musical line up (upright bass, violin, tuba, accordion, drums, harmonica, guitar) may appear on paper to be wildly inaccessible-- nothing could be farther from the truth. DeVotchKa was recently named The Best Underground Band in Colorado by a panel of industry insiders for the Denver Post; The regional act “most deserving of mainstream recognition".

And the band is getting it. Thanks to the band’s brilliant live performances and its striking recorded output Supermelodrama (2000), and Una Volta (2003), DeVotchKa has moved from selling out 500 seat clubs in Denver and Boulder to an established following that runs from the Southwest to the Midwest cities from Phoenix to Chicago and St. Louis, picking up an astonished and rabid fanbase along the way. Some of these discerning listeners happen to be critically acclaimed artists themselves.

The band’s critically hailed debut Supermelodrama was produced by Bob Ferbache (16 Horsepower) and has sold through numerous pressings. The record’s dark and exotic interplay of Latin and Slavic influences scores the songs – because it’s all about the songs anyway, isn’t it – brought to life by the fevered and anguished cries of vocalist and songwriter Nick Urata. Walk the razors edge into a bathtub filled with blood and you will find him there wailing “I would saw off my limbs for a little bit more/I loved you/but love is like a dirty whore….” We’ll start there, and journey downward into the band’s swirling abyss.

Una Volta finds the band’s sound maturing, with production help from Craig Schumacher (Calexico). Here the band throws a loop in the hangman’s noose: “Queen of the Serpent Streets” incorporates disparate elements of chamber music, akin to Mark Mothersbaugh’s Rushmore score, an entirely different sounding band, until you’re face to face with the song’s desperate beauty-- The blood that pumps through everything the band does.

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