Some songs are so good that it feels like you’ve known them forever. Sam Vance-Law’s “Prettyboy” is one of those songs. A short guitar intro à la At The Drive-In is followed closely by a gentle choral entrance, then comes a fearless plunge into the choppy waters of Franz Ferdinand funk, and then, if you can believe it, strings, piano, operetta, and then—wooop—all the way back to the beginning. Wow. Wait, wasn’t that the single of the week at the Oxford Street HMV in 1998? Wrong. Vance-Law indeed grew up in England but returned to Canada, his birthplace, to bum around in Edmonton with Mac DeMarco, Sean Nicholas Savage, and TOPS (warning: the latter will also make an appearance this year). Eventually he found his way to Berlin, where he’s stood on stage with Dear Reader and to open for Wallis Bird and to work in the studio with Konstantin Gropper (exactly—Get Well Soon). Enough namedropping? Right, of course: the music is most important. Aside from this song, Vance-Law has an entire album in the works. It’s called Homotopia. Hiding behind its baroque cover are ten (you guessed it) stories, all in first-person chamber-pop, about being gay. We might mention at this point that every single one of these songs is as amazing as “Prettyboy.” If you’d rather wait until June 10th to believe that, no problem—we’d understand.

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