Hospitality, one of the bands playing this year's 4Knots Music Festival.

The lineup for this year's 4Knots Music Festival—the Village Voice's free summer-music extravaganza, taking place at the South Street Seaport on July 143is beginning to take shape, and this morning brings news of the first five bands on the all-day affair's docket. Among the artists playing Piers 16 and 17 that day: chiming Brooklynites The Drums; the fuzzed-out Crocodiles; the outrageously pleasant Hospitality; the blistering punkers Bleached; and R&B revivalist Nick Waterhouse. More bands will be announced shortly, but for now, why not sample the wares of the lineup as it stands below?

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Hospitality w/Dustin Wong, Glass Ghost
Glasslands
Friday, February 3

Better than: Listening to old K Records albums.

Thinking that Hospitality is a Scottish band, is an understandable mistake. The recent Merge signees are, in fact, from New York City, even if their smarty-pants pop has more in common with bands like Camera Obscura than many of their noisier hometown compatriots. The group crafts luscious songs that more often than not reference the members' friends, personal lives, work, and relationships. Amber Papini furthers the Anglo-Saxon suggestion with an idiosyncratic, lovely voice that contains just a hint of a British accent (she's from Kansas City, by the way). And the carefully put-together guitars, bass, drums, and sometimes horns and synths, practically beg to be listened to over a cup of PG Tips on a rainy day.

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As the Billyburg/Bushwick/Greenpoint underground overloads itself with crude art-noize slop, the clean-cut, pop-obsessive whizzes in the Red Hook-based Hospitality are quite the welcome anomaly. With an indiepop aesthetic as charming as their band name, singer/songwriter/guitarist Amber Papini, drummer Nathan Michel and bass-man Brian Betancourt jam-pack their heavenly tunes with a feathery array of hook-filled jangle, orchestral shimmers and catchy la-la's and ooh-ooh's. The chanteuse-like Papini is irresistible, slinging her axe and outlining her dreamy vision of New York in an unmistakable voice sure to inspire quite a few indie boy crushes, especially in the wake of her band's Merge debut coming out.

Sound of the City spoke to Papini on the phone from her beloved Red Hook to talk about all things Hospitality.

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Unknown Mortal Orchestra w/Man/Miracle, Blouse, and Hospitality
Glasslands
Thursday, September 15

Better than: The cab ride from the West Village to Williamsburg.

"Let me introduce you to my friends," announced Unknown Mortal Orchestra lead singer Ruban Nielson to the full house at Glasslands on Thursday night. As the New Zealand native introduced his bandmates—bassist Jake Portrait, and teenage drummer Julien Ehrlich —an anticipatory buzz shot through the crowd. The Portland-based trio is getting ready to head out on tour with the chillwave kingpins Toro y Moi, which on the surface seems like an odd fit; they're a rock outfit that draws on psychedelia and funk. But the versatility of their sound has brought in chillwave adherents, and it wouldn't be too surprising if there were other people who were willing to make taste exceptions in order to appreciate UMO's sprightly take on rock and roll.

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