Sweden: home to many fine exports – IKEA, Julmust, Volvo and, of course, some of the finest, most sincere and beautiful music in the world. Maybe it’s the climate there, the lack of real pretension and the artistic impulse that seems inherant in every Swedish person I’ve ever met, but there’s a level of quality in their music that you just don’t get elsewhere.

So this week I’ve had The Forest and The Trees staying with me in London. Stockholm residents and husband and wife Joel and Linnea Edin were in the UK to play two shows at The Social and The Rest is Noise and introduce the UK to their swimmingly lovely folksy pop sound. They make music with a sublime heart and soul that sounds like it was recorded in a dusky field sometime in late summer. Totally transcendental and it even sounded great while there was a snow storm raging outside.

Their myspace has some good stuff and there are two great videos on Vimeo that you can watch here and here. Hopefully they’ll be back next year with an album to promote and we’ll get to see them play some more.

Kudos to Joel and Linnea (and to fellow live band members, the brothers David and Robin Lindvall) for being the perfect houseguests and making us wish we’d had more time with them to drink wine and talk music.