Fresh faces changing Seattle indie music scene

They're coming, like locusts going biblical.

They're coming from near and far, from Spokane to Manhattan, a stampede of indie rockers — a regular invasion of the billing snatchers.

As long as they get their rehearsal space, the species is generally not considered dangerous — though it's not recommended that you feed them, lest they lose their 7-Eleven foraging skills. And stay away from their amps! They will kill, if they feel their sound systems are threatened.

Aqueduct, Crooked Fingers, Band of Horses, Panda & Angel, the Color Bars, the Fruit Bats — just to name a few of The Invaders. Like replanted oaks, they've added rich textures and highlights to Seattle's aural landscape, which of course was clear-cut and reseeded indigenously after grunge.

Laura Veirs has been here eight years now, from Colorado, though Veirs doesn't spend a whole bunch of time loafing around her Central District home. Veirs and her Tortured Souls backing band toured Europe last year.

"We played Hamburg in a really crappy part of town, a punk-rock club in the red-light district. And there were 13 people [in the crowd]. This was right after coming from Paris, where we had packed houses, and everyone knew the words to our songs."

Europeans — the French mainly — bought twice as many copies of her last album, "Carbon Glacier," as Americans did.

"I feel like I still have this frontier to discover in my own country," she said, over breakfast-for-lunch at West Seattle's Easy Street Records café. With her blond hair pulled back over a blue corduroy jacket and T-shirt, Veirs looks like she could be a graduate political-science student or a teaching assistant for a literature class.

Indeed, her lyrics are sharp and imagistic, scraping at literature, evoking wistful nostalgia; her voice, meanwhile, has been compared to everyone from Suzanne Vega to Kristin Hersch to Chan "Cat Power" Marshall.

"Year of Meteors," Veirs' new album, might be the one that helps her conquer her home-country frontier. Bankrolled by Nonesuch Records (David Byrne, Buena Vista Social Club, Bill Frisell, etc.), "Meteors" is richly textured, with plenty of between-the-lines synth effects ... but, with Veirs, it's the words that grab you.

"Furnaces burn everlasting black tattoos of you onto me ...

Wash me with your mouth, brackish bright water from your eyes," she sings on "Magnetized."

The only thing holding her back — and this isn't her fault, it's more the shallowness of the music business — is the difficulty in labeling her. Folk? Sort of, not always. Pop? Yes, but intelligently so. Americana? Yes and no.

Soon, she'll begin another extraordinary tour (American dates with Sufjan Stevens): Boston, Montreal, Chicago, Galway, Dublin, London, Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, Brussels, Paris, Bath, Manchester ... . After the long tour, she plans to do the usual back in Seattle: "Hang out at home and decompress and not talk to anyone."

Before leaving for Europe, she'll be singing her majestic folk pop songs at the Zoo, opening for Neko Case on Sunday (sold out). She'll be back in Seattle in November, for the "official" CD-release show at the Tractor Tavern.

• While Veirs is feeling quite at home in Seattle, Eric Johnson is still getting to know his way around. He was raised in Chicago, and after an undistinguished high-school career, started playing in bands ("that was my college"): first I Rowboat, then Califone. Shortly after joining Califone, Johnson was on tour, with Modest Mouse and then-unknowns the Shins.

The Shins soon became Sub Pop's hottest act (later supplanted by the Postal Service); James Mercer, leader of the Shins, put a word in at Sub Pop for Johnson's post-Califone band, the Fruit Bats. Johnson ended up signing with Sub Pop, which makes sense as many songs from "Spelled in Bones" are positively Shins-esque.

"James and I have similar tastes. We both have high tenor voices and write melodic songs. And we both really like the Kinks," said Johnson, insisting that the similarities pretty much end there.

The Fruit Bats certainly fit in with the Shins, Iron & Wine, Holopaw and other Sub Pop bands that have a common thread, a spare but jittery sound. The new grunge?

In any case, Johnson recorded "Bones" at the home of bandmate Dan Strack, who had previously left Chicago for Seattle. While hanging around Strack's Ballard house, Johnson met a young woman, friend of a friend. A few months later, he is living with her in Tacoma — and the Seattle area has another hot new band.

• Of course, there are some terrific musical artists born and raised in the Seattle area: Bre Loughlin is one of the brightest local rising stars.

The stunning news of the local music scene is that Loughlin is no longer with Kuma: Forced to chose between that dynamic, electronic-rock band and a side project called Daylight Basement, she chose the latter.

Daylight Basement started as a solo thing, with Loughlin playing guitar and singing '80s-alt sounding songs. Now she has added a couple of powerhouses: Davis Martin, the Maktub drummer, and Dejha Colantuono of the Rotten Apples on bass and backing vocals. The new lineup makes its debut at Chop Suey on Wednesday.

As for Kuma, they ran an ad in the Stranger, seeking a new singer.

Tom Scanlon: tscanlon@seattletimes.com