You Were Into Them First is a series aiming  to give new bands the limelight we feel they deserve. The first of the series focuses on Edinburgh’s Eagleowl.

Named because an eagleowl can kill a woodpigeon (Eagleowl’s Malcolm Benzie used to work in a record shop with Woodpigeon’s Mark Hamilton apparently, though the rivalry in band names is friendly), Eagleowl describe themselves as a lo-fi post-folk ensemble. If you aren’t sure what that means, this may be easier: Eagleowl are the Spacemen 3 of folk. Simple looping guitar riffs played over a woozy drone of fuzzy strings, breathy, sometimes murmured, vocals, all done to hypnotic effect. On the band’s website, they claim to believe in doing things right, rather than doing things fast – this appears to apply to both the quality of their output and the pace of their songs.

Like Spacemen 3, some of the music is gently mesmerising while other songs like This Is Not Your Lucky Day have a pulsing air of menace about them. Their new single, Sleep the Winter, falls into the former category – it’s a whispered lullaby moving at a glacial pace, which draws you slowly into its titular hibernation.

Sleep The Winter follows their debut EP, For The Thoughts You Never Had, which, to give you an idea of the attention to detail that’s going on here, was released as a limited edition CD with screen printed hand folded card sleeve. That’s now sold out in its physical form, but can still be downloaded from the usual sources. It features Motherfucker which is so positively poppy, by Eagleowl standards, that it even has a drum beat. The titles of the other tracks on the E.P. – Sleeptide, Blanket and Blackout – hint at a desire to be smothered and unconscious which is mirrored in the somnambulant nature of the music.

December the 11^th sees them play at the Bowery in Edinburgh to mark the release of Sleep The Winter, followed by  an appearance at the Sick Kids Sunday charity all dayer, at the GRV in Edinburgh on Suday 31^st January alongside an impressive line-up which includes James Yorkston & Adrian Crowley’s tribute to Daniel Johnston.

Sleep The Winter is released by Kilter on December 11^th. Check that out here.

Eagleowl’s Myspace is here.