Alt-J is a band based in Cambridge that breaks all boundaries of genre-defining music, blending falsetto vocals, throbbing hip-hop beats, electronic elements and melodious guitar. Chaotic? Far from it; Alt-J brilliantly fuses organic and metallic sounds, as evidenced by their diverse debut album An Awesome Wave, available via Infectious Records. Check out the mess-with-with-your-mind music video Ellis Bahl for “Breezeblocks,” or better yet, catch them in concert on their ongoing European tour and their North American tour later this year.

Bonus: the video for “Tessellate,” directed by Alex Southam is definitely worth a watch too. It’s a twist on Italian Renaissance painter Raphael’s The School of Athens, set in a modern day gangster’s paradise.

This review was written by collaborator Victoria Montalvo, an undergraduate studying film at the University of Texas at Austin and currently studying abroad in Hong Kong.