As you'll notice from their cover of Niko's "These Days" (above), Mates of State radically uplift the moods of the songs that they reinterpret using ebullient vocal harmonies. The San Francisco sweethearts are making an album of the practice with Crushes (The Covers Mixtape), out this Summer. Of the songs they chose, they say that
"There are so many artists we considered, some for the mere fact that they wrote a perfect song, some for nostalgia's sake, some because more people need to hear them, some for the challenge, and some to shed a whole different light on a song: Our light... make it a duet, more optimistic or maybe less traditional."
If you are a Girls fan, you should really stream or download their version of "Laura" at their website. It's like hearing it for the first time.
Here is the Crushes tracklist:
01 "Laura" (Girls)
02 "Son et Lumiere" (The Mars Volta)
03 "Sleep the Clock Around" (Belle & Sebastian)
04 "Technicolor Girls" (Death Cab for Cutie)
05 "Long Way Home" (Tom Waits)
06 "Love Letter" (Nick Cave)
07 "Second Hand News" (Fleetwood Mac)
08 "17 Pink Sugar Elephants" (Vashti Bunyan)
09 "Roller Coaster Ride" (Dear Nora)
10 "True Love Will Find You in the End" (Daniel Johnston)
