If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a video worth?


Alas, if only writing was my forte so I could do Vandaveer justice with a glowing review! They made my top 10 list for 2009 and we are excited to have them as a part of our showcase at SXSW. (The rest of our fantastic lineup will be announced in the next couple weeks!)

There is nothing I can write that would more aptly describe them than what you can learn for yourself by watching these videos.

I highly recommend checking out both Divide & Conquer and Grace & Speed, their first release.



This from the bio on the Vandaveer website:

VANDAVEER is the alt-folk song-singing/record making/globetrotting project penned and put forth by DC-by-way-of-Kentucky tunesmith Mark Charles Heidinger. Vandaveer’s debut album, Grace & Speed, a mostly live, stripped down affair, swiftly entered this great big dusty world in the spring of 2007. The press responded heartily, with The Washington Post saying Vandaveer “revives the earnestness of the pre-psychedelic 60’s,” and XM Cafe calling him “this generation’s Nick Drake.”

Touring continually on both sides of the Atlantic ever since, Vandaveer has played 250+ shows, sharing stages with a host of humbling artists including Bon Iver, Vetiver, Alela Diane, Alejandro Escovedo, Vashti Bunyan, Bill Callahan, Fleet Foxes, and the like. In addition to said Vandaveering, Heidinger has been known to fraternize and conspire with other music-making hooligans, primarily as a bassist for fellow DCers These United States.

Vandaveer’s sophomore effort, Divide & Conquer, touches upon similar themes found in its elder sibling, winding timeworn themes of love & death, malice & goodwill, sin & perseverance into (mostly) four-minute vignettes. To see D&C through, Vandaveer enlisted the able assistance of longtime collaborator and producer Duane Lundy, brothers-in-arms/These United States bandmates Robby Cosenza and Justin Craig, and most notably, Rose Guerin, supplying the loveliest harmonies this side of Eden. A decidedly more produced venture, D&C offers up a flourishing chamber folk companion to its bedroomy lo-fi folk/pop predecessor.

Released in France in April 2009 on Alter. K Records, Divide & Conquer was hailed by Rolling Stone as “jarring new folk”. The US release of Divide & Conquer was August 25th, 2009, on Supply And Demand Music.