PopCrush Presents: Few Bits

Every week at PopCrush, we’re putting the spotlight on one up-and-coming act you need to know about. Why? So you can get on board early before everyone else and their mother jumps on the bandwagon…and so you can be that one friend in the group who’s always like, “Um, actually, I prefer their earlier work.”

"Summer Sun," the latest single from Belgian dream-pop group Few Bits, won't rally beach-goers around car stereos come July, and it's unlikely it'll see a luau through to sunrise. Instead, the song mimics the season's softer notes — seemingly drawing inspiration from slight breezes and waning day-end light — for a soothing effect that's summer all the same.

The ability to simultaneously enliven and relax is the crux of Few Bits' appeal in 2016. Formed in 2008 (though their first complete work wouldn't come until years later), the six-member band suffuses pillowy atmospheric drones and humming guitar for smoothed-over gloss — Karolien Van Ransbeeck's reticent, flint-thin voice is the fittingly distant captain.

"I wanna go anywhere I dream away / I wanna taste the day, so take me there / I know I’m living here lonely / I wanna go anywhere I dream away," Van Ransbeeck trills on the track.

The sense of breezy early-'90s nostalgia — patent throughout new LP Big Sparks — isn't an earmark of the group, though. A 2013 eponymous debut album was much darker, but Van Ransbeeck told Belgium's Peek-A-Boo in a February interview that she and the group are committed to going wherever the wind takes them — in this case, someplace halcyon.

"The songs for this album were written in a period in which I longed for the sun and new adventures," she said. "Last year, I suddenly was caught in a rush of inspiration after a failed relationship and I suddenly had the proper spirit to write new songs and to record them. For me personally, it has become a meaningful album. I hope people feel that positive energy."

Now, having supported the likes of Vampire Weekend, Few Bits are prepared for a big showing at the United Kingdom's The Great Escape festival. And after that, well, it's anyone's guess.

"I think Few Bits has a recognizable sound, but we evolve," Van Ransbeeck said. "Maybe the next album will be even harder, or slower and dark."

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