Stornoway

The folky indie pop band Stornoway take their name from a town in Scotland's Outer Hebrides, but the group hails from Oxford, England. Singer/guitarist Brian Briggs, keyboardist/string player Jonathan Ouin, and bassist Ollie Steadman and drummer Rob Steadman (a pair of brothers from South Africa) formed the band while they were attending Oxford University; the well-studied band includes an ornithologist and a Russian translator among its ranks. The band debuted its jangly, largely acoustic sound -- which has drawn comparisons to James, Belle & Sebastian, and XTC -- with a self-titled EP that included the song "Zorbing," which was inspired by and named after the sport of rolling down a hill in a transparent sphere.