From the strange musical hinterlands gave the world Slint, My Morning Jacket, and Hair Police, the Kentucky-based Nativity Singers are further proof that college towns offer fertile creative ground. The trio emerged in 2010 as a blur of jittery guitars and synths, prompting a local rag to remark, “Underneath all the clanging and shaking are tightly structured pop songs.” Later that year, the group secured a slot in the Boomslang Festival (headlined by Akron/Family), where they performed a series of songs inspired by the Italian novel Invisible Cities.

The band released its first EP in the summer of 2012 with producer Duane Lundy (Jim James, Daniel Martin Moore, Ben Sollee). Recorded over several months at Lundy’s sprawling Shangri-la Studio, the self-titled EP captures the trio navigating its way through stutter-step rhythms and frequent eruptions of noise, discovering, in the process, an unabashed love of pop melodies. The EP was selected as a “Current Favorite” by You Ain’t No Picasso, received airplay on WCJT 89.9 FM (Jacksonville, FL), and eventually reached #11 on the charts at college radio stalwart WRFL 88.1 FM (Lexington, KY). Tracks were later featured in the podcast Audio Adventure and in the Know Your Own series curated by Hop Hop Records.