The Skins' 'Still Sleep' is a favorite album of 2016 a week into its release!

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STILL SLEEP

It’s just past midnight, December 21st became Thursday December 22nd which I am aware is today. I’m in bed scrolling through my Facebook feed on my phone, and for whatever reason I scrolled down quite a bit. A lot more than I usually scroll down. I see a sponsored post of a band I never heard of before, The Skins. It was a video promo of their EP Still Sleep with their video for “Bury Me” as the backdrop. What caught my attention was the aesthetic of the video, the color scheme, the fonts being used, the cinematography, The Skins’ logo, everything. I gathered it was some sort of R&B group, and I searched for the EP on my iTunes but it wasn’t playing the songs. I jumped out of bed and went on my computer and started listening to the EP. I can immediately tell that this group had something special. The production is great, but something about it reminded me of a band more so than a vocalist just singing to a track. I thought to myself, “It would be so cool if this group was… a band.” As I started searching the web about my new discovery, I found out that The Skins are in fact a band comprised of Bay Li (Lead Vocals), Kaya Nico (Vocals/Bass), Reef Cole (Drums), Daisy Spencer (Guitar) and Russ Chell (Guitar/Synth).

I was coming up on the 3rd time through of listening to Still Sleep at this point. I was still doing some research on the band and was beginning to think that one of the tracks should go up on our weekly Jukebox Playlist piece although I knew it would be hard to pick just one song. As I tried to find the release date, I saw that it was December 16th just last week. Then I started thinking if I can write about this for our Favorite Albums 2016 list. Am I thinking straight? Is this already a favorite album of mine from this entire year even though I’m less than an hour into knowing it’s existence? It’s too soon right? Can I put my name on the line as Founder and Editor-In-Chief of Highlark for making such a rash decision? The answer is abso-fucking-lutely YES! The Skins are the definition of the modern day band. With everything that is happening in this country, where so many people have lost hope, if I was asked “Tell me one good thing about America that shows it’s done something right?” I would say, The Skins. This is the type of band everyone and especially the youth needs to listen to. They are IT, The Skins are the future.

One thing I didn’t find surprising is that they are managed by Adrian Grenier’s Wreckroom Records. Wreckroom does an incredible job at finding talent that as they say themselves, “Left of center.” It’s only fitting that their EP Release show is tonight at a great “outside the box” venue, House Of Yes in Bushwick. The best things is, you can see this show for free as long as you go HERE and register! I did, and I’ll be there and you should be there too. The Skins are the dopest band around right now, period.