Sigur Rós Frontman Rouses Riceboy Sleeps Side-Project onto LP

Amidst all the Americana, folksiness, and indie-rock moves of the almighty, compilation-for-a-generation Dark Was the Night, few songs seemed so radically 'other' as "Happiness," that eight-and-a-half-minute burbling ambient blow-out from Riceboy Sleeps.

The artistic marriage of Sigur Rós's Jón Þór 'Jónsi' Birgisson and Parachutes' Alex Somers (not pictured), Riceboy Sleeps started out as a product of the pair's domestic union; songs built together, late at night, on laptops. Of course, Riceboy Sleeps quickly evolved into anything but a band: the pair's paintings and video-work soon exhibited at galleries and festivals on hemispheres North and South; the first entry in their discography being not a record, but a sweet hardcover art book.

Now, Birgisson and Somers are prepping their first Riceboy Sleeps LP, a self-titled set due out in July. The instrumental affair is big on dense atmospheres and processed lullabies, the duo taking acoustic instruments and treating them until they sounded like pale blue fog rolling through mystical dreams of Icelandic wood-nymphs. Sleep tight, Riceboy...

• Watch: Riceboy Sleeps "All the Big Trees"
• Watch: Riceboy Sleeps "Daníell in the Sea"

Riceboy Sleeps
1. "Happiness"
2. "Atlas Song"
3. "Indian Summer"
4. "Stokkseyri"
5. "Boy 1904"
6. "All the Big Trees"
7. "Daníell in the Sea"
8. "Howl"
9. "Sleeping Giant"