Whenever I listen to Shook Foil’s self-titled EP, I see places and feel like going. I’ve got my car packed up and I’m racing past evergreen trees in “A Bit Of Levity,” which, with its upbeat tempo, ocean-inspired lyrics, and killer guitar/keyboard/tambourine ratio, starts Shook Foil off spectacularly. When I hear “Las Palabras,” a Spanish track, that, while surprising upon the first run through, just works, I’m at a party in South America. “Lullaby For Waking Up” works too, with its recorder/violin duet that sends me back 400 years and makes me think of the perfect collaboration of the Old and New Worlds.

If I wanted to use one word to describe Shook Foil, it would have to be multicultural, and I mean that in the sense of how I would describe the EP in two words: well-blended. Over the course of Shook Foil, I encountered the perfect unions of traditional and not so traditional, English and Spanish, and guitar, drums and bass with recorder, tambourine, and violin. Shook Foil manages to bring several worlds together, and I think that’s why I’m taken to so many places when I listen to their EP.

Has my imagery convinced you to give Shook Foil a chance yet? Because honestly, the more I listen to this EP, the more I fall in love with it. Shook Foil has an incredible command over an array of instruments and ideas, both traditional and exotic. Singers Aaron Hodgin and Anna Katie Espada, whose voice got me hooked on “Las Palabras,” make getting drawn into Shook Foil easy, and all the tracks flow together really well. A song will begin and you expect it to sound like the others, and then – bam! – you’re hit with something completely foreign. And although Hodgin croons that he’s still “trying to figure out exactly what [he wants] to be,” in the closing track, “Swimming In The Sea,” Shook Foil has created an identity for themselves by dabbling in so many elements rather than focusing on one.