Goat

With an unfettered sound influenced by everything from Afro-beat to Anatolian funk, Goat are an experimental psychedelic rock band based out of Gothenburg, Sweden. The band have received acclaim for their explosive, energetic performances, during which they don elaborate masks and costumes, as well as their more structured full-length recordings, including the aptly named 2012 debut World Music and the lush, acoustic-based Requiem (2016).

Not much is known about the mysterious masked band, though an apocryphal back-story claims they are just one of many incarnations over the last 30 years of a group from a small, voodoo-worshiping northern town named Korpilombolo. Goat's sound is a fusion of world music influences, as they create a timelessly psychedelic sound that doesn't feel anchored to any single time or place. In 2012, the band released its first album, World Music, though Rocket Records , followed quickly by a live album, Live Ballroom Ritual, the following year. Teaming up with Sub Pop Records , the Swedish psych outfit returned with the exploratory and motorik Commune in the fall of 2014. After releasing the "It's Time for Fun" and "I Sing in Silence" singles in late 2015 and early 2016, respectively, the mysterious group returned in September of 2016 with its third record, the more acoustic and subdued Requiem. Fuzzed in Europe, a collection of live recordings, appeared in 2017, and the band's soundtrack to horror film Double Date was released for Record Store Day in 2018. Also that year, the band released the single "Let It Burn," written for the short film Killing Gävle. ~ Gregory Heaney, Rovi