The Shutes: "Bright Blue Berlin Sky"

Unlike other guitar bands fronted by brothers, the Shutes have a secret weapon: Michael and Dave Champion can both sing high, convincing home listeners they’re a couple doing accompaniments. They’ve already fooled fans on the Isle of Wight scene and are now going overseas with the formula, taking their Echo of Love EP to the Eurozone. Hopefully it should make up for the continental tobacco that smugglers on the Isle keep getting confiscated.

The EP’s big hook, “Bright Blue Berlin Sky,” shows off the Champions’ voices to full effect, and rightly got them flashing on the NME’s radar. Sighing along to some starry folk, brother Mike pines for his absent Fraulein; a European vision who men would cross time zones for. “When she moves she’s like a rolling sea / She’s got more love than she will ever need,” he warbles, a hint of jealousy in his feminine voice. It vanishes once harmonizing brother Dave steps in, helping him cook up one of the most bittersweet choruses of the year: “And I don’t ever want to see you surrender / And I never want to say goodbye / Because the last thing I remember / Is a tear falling from your eye / As you flew into the Berlin sky / Into the bright blue Berlin sky.” It’s got to be the most immediate inter-continental love songs going, and is just primed for the airport scene in 2013’s big rom-com—or a Zweiohrküken sequel, now that Til Schweiger’s gone international.