Belgian bands

Some people have been asking me about what music is hip in Belgium. Ok, some people may be an overstatement, since it was just one person, but I was bored, aight? (Anything is better than writing papers...) Anywho, I thought I'd compile a small selection of Belgium's finest bands from the last few years to inform my extensive American readership *cough* of the delights that our little country produces besides chocolate and beer.

Singer-songwriter Milow is from my hometown, Leuven. "You don't know" was his first Belgian hit.

The American audience may know Milow from his cover of 50cent's Ayo Technology, or from Perez Hilton's shout out.

Selah Sue is another singer-songwriter that hails from Leuven. In fact, Milow "discovered" her. She just released her first album last month. Perez Hilton likes her too.

Absynthe Minded has been around for a few years and have nestled themselves firmly in the indie corner of the Belgian music landscape.

Other well known songs from them are their first hit My heroics: Part I and Envoi, which is actually a translation of a poem by Hugo Claus, a famous Belgian writer.

The Black Box Revelation is a garage band that is currently working on their third album somewhere in California with some hot shot producer I don't know (so much for being up to date with the latest music news...) Some extra trivia: this music video was shot in the St.Anna tunnell, a pedestrian tunnel underneath the river Schelde in Antwerp. The escalators in the beginning are made of wood and are the originals from the 1930's. BBR may be known to the American audience because a song of theirs was featured on Vampire Diaries (although I only discovered this facty myself when I was youtubing their songs.)

One of our veteran rockbands is called dEUS. They'be been around for a while and are one of Belgium's success stories in terms of breaking through outside Belgium (I don't know what the their status of recognition is in the US though...) My favorite song by them is Nothing Really Ends (ignore the Flemish blabbering and the ocean sounds at the beginning... I couldn't find a better vid).



To wrap up my small selection of Belgian music's finest, I present Daan. His voice sort of reminds me of Johnny Cash. Not that that has anything to do with the kind of music he makes. Housewife was the song that made him known to a wider music-loving audience a few years ago, but this song has owned the charts and appeared on many a commercial and tv-show in 2010:

Allright Belgians, who did I miss?
And non-Belgians, what do you think?