Artist Spotlight: The Hawk In Paris

Dan Haseltine has been making music for almost 20 years, released over 9 albums, and won 3 grammy awards, but there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of him. Haseltine’s successful band Jars of Clay specializes in Christian rock. On his new project, The Hawk In Paris, however, Haseltine teams up with producers Matt Bronleewe and Jeremy Bose to move away from spiritual content in favor of a totally new project that encompasses all my favorite things about indie music, most especially the power to fuze genres and drag classic styles out of the past and into the present. Indie-tronica has become a “thing” over the past few years with the discovery of The Postal Service and Owl City, but The Hawk In Paris goes all the way back to the roots of electronica and matches it with today’s modern advancements in technology and sound. “The New Hello (His)” is a dark and infectious nod to German 70s musical legends Kraftwerk. The Hawk In Paris updates the classic sounds of Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode for the 21st century and it is a treat for anyone with any leanings toward the electronic genre. Many of the songs are mellower than their predecessors—“Between The World And You” and “Curse The Love Songs” are breathtakingly gentle and show off Haseltine’s falsetto. The trios musical prowess shines on the two versions of “The New Hello” which feature the same vocal melodies but entirely different tonality, key, and instrumentation, making The Hawk In Paris the only band I’ve ever seen to so fully and radically imagine a song in two different ways. You can check out The Hawk In Paris here and I promise you that you won’t regret it.