Future Islands are a post-wave dance band from North Carolina - now residing in the fertile "music capital of awesome" Baltimore.

Future Islands play a terse yet passionate music wrought from a stripped-back palette. Gerrit Welmers' cartwheeling synthesizer melodies tumble across the austere wilderness of William Cashion's post punk bass pulse, driven ever forward by Eric Murillo's ecstatic feel for rhythm.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the band's sound however takes shape in the form of Sam Herring's distinctive guttural vocal, delivered as Glenn Danzig if he ever found himself in a Shakespearean tragedy.

At times on its knees, at others belted out like it's the end of the world, Herring's vocal lends a raw emotional warmth to the group's resolute synth-punk bounce.