Julia Nunes plays ukulele super hard, she sings her face off, and she turns terrible moods into toe tapping sessions. She's most well-known for her videos, which serve as a window into the list of her favorite songs, as well as a platform for her heart wrenchingly honest originals. You will find several layers of voices and instruments in her reinterpretations of 90's pop songs, breathing new life into those 'oldies but goodies'. In videos she's covered Nat King Cole and N*Sync, to name only a few, and it's impossible to watch just one. Viewers are willingly sucked into an alternative reality, where everything is harmonized and ukulele-ized, and Julia's lyrics and delivery somehow perfectly describe the feeling which no song on the radio can touch.

The power of her personality comes through in her songs, but you'd never guess she's a bona fide comedian unless you stick around for the bloopers at the end of her videos. She doesn't hold anything back from her fans. Her live shows are a veritable variety hour of jokes, songs, dancing, and choking back tears. Her confident vulnerability draws people in. When they hear they want to pick up their guitars again. They want to lean to play the ukulele. They want to be her best friend.

At age 22, Julia has a great deal of musical experience. She started writing songs at age 13, performing at open mic nights in her hometown in upstate New York. From there she took a big jump into an opening slot for Ben Folds. They both played solo sets but came together on the song that helped Ben find Julia in the first place. She covered his song, 'Gone' in a video and he too was taken in, like so many before him. They took to the stage, adding her uke to his piano as they harmonized to close the shows. Nunes has also toured England, and headlined countless US tours. It seems she's got a weakness for Bens, because in November of 2011 she went on a 2 month tour with Ben Kweller. She s also shared the stage with Weezer, Matt & Kim and Katy Perry. Not to mention she's rocked the stage at the Bonnaroo Music Festival two years in a row.

Her crowd-funded album Settle Down (release date: Feb 28, 2012) will be her fourth album of original material. She broke records on kickstarter.com raising $78,888 and selling over 1,200 copies months before it was even finished being recorded.

1. Stay Awake
2. Odd
3. Lullaby
4. Lookout For Yourself
5. Nothing's That Great
6. He Is Mad
7. To The Damsels: Run
8. Fair Weather
9. Comatose
10. Pizza
11. Maybe I Will
12. I Will Go Anywhere With You
13. This Is What I Used To Know
14. I Wasn't Worried
15. Balloons
16. First Impressions
17. Into The Sunshine
18. Waiting

CD
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006X08EPE/?tag=imwan-20

MP3
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006XKR7ES/?tag=imwan-20

Her last EP (produced by Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn from Pomplamoose) was AMAZING. It was only 5 songs, but they just sounded so lush...She's saying she's gonna do 12 songs, maybe more. I hope the pre-recording fundraising will allow her to put that level of quality in a much bigger project.

By the way, "Julia Nunes Would Be Nothing Without Me" would make an excellent album title.

So the Kickstarter pledge period just ended...

The goal was $15,000 to fund studio time, pressing, marketing and other costs.

Final pledge amount was $77,848.

I'm excited to see what she can do with those sorts of resources, given what she's been able to do with so little before.

Julia's first foray into electronica?

Release date, title and album art revealed via Facebook:

With 18 MP3s!!!

I'm getting the physical CD.

Another vignette - Very noir...

Cover art, tracklisting and preorder link added.

Looks like 6 songs are re-recordings of earlier songs:
Odd
Comatose
Maybe I Will
Balloons
First Impressions
Into The Sunshine

This will be the FIFTH version of Into The Sunshine she's released (YouTube version, Left Right Wrong studio version, LRW Live version, I Wrote These version, and now this). It's gotten better every time, and I can see how adding some more layered production will help. It's just a great song.

One of the tracks, "Nothing's That Great" has been preview-released on SoundCloud...

http://soundcloud.com/julianunes/nothings-that-great

Also, a live version of "Stay Awake" performed at the Kickstarter offices has been posted:

http://vimeo.com/28152703

Holy wow! Julia will be the musical guest on Conan O'Brien on January 24th!

In honor of her appearance on Conan TONIGHT, Julia's released a new video for the song she'll be performing!

Updated with AmazWAN preorder linkage!

I got the download of Stay Awake - part of the Kickstarter project. It is rockin' awesome.

For those who missed it:

Makes for an interesting contrast with another recent televised performance by a certain female singer-songwriter...

Download instructions for the MP3s were sent out to Kickstarter contributors this morning! I just finished the download and am about to embark on my first listen!

Thoughts:

1. Stay Awake - Great song. Been listening to it for weeks. Waiting to hear it on Sirius AltNation or Spectrum.
2. Odd - A fun remake. Smoother vocals, more layered harmonies
3. Lullaby - A sweet song about being apart from your sweetie.
4. Lookout For Yourself - Bouncy fun.
5. Nothing's That Great - Not a huge fan of this, since she released it on SoundCloud a couple of months ago. It may grow on me.
6. He Is Mad - This one's been on Youtube for a while. The MP3's sound quality reveals some fun details, like harmonies in the background.
7. To The Damsels: Run - Wow, a genuine rocker!
8. Fair Weather - Something of a quiet tearjerker. Nice. Contains the lyric from which the album title came.
9. Comatose - My favorite from the "I Think You Know" EP. Don't really like the slow-wail-chorus intro (which she's been doing live since about a week after the EP came out), but the rest of the remake is a little more polished than the original. Overall, a win.
10. Pizza - Goofy and awesome. See the video above.
11. Maybe I Will - Another remake. A little faster than the original, but not hugely different. More full-throated harmonies, as opposed to the falsettos on the original. The choir at the end is pretty cool.

More to come...

12. I Will Go Anywhere With You - Verse is nondescript, but I really like the chorus.
13. This Is What I Used To Know - The story told is kind of cool. The piano bit when she's talking about her piano teacher is a nice touch. "I used to like her son, but he turned out to be a dick." Awesome.
14. I Wasn't Worried - See video above. A bit of a vocal exercise.
15. Balloons - Another remake, never cared for the original. This is quite a bit better, with a fuller production, including strings. Harmonies help, too, since the first album was just her and her guitar.
16. First Impressions - Yet another remake. Starts out sparse like the original, but gets more layers as it goes. Really nice.
17. Into The Sunshine - One last remake. This one has appeared on all of her full-length albums. Has a little more roll and less bounce than the last version, but the "Ba-ba-ba" vocals really blew me away when they kicked in. This one would also be a good candidate for alternative radio airplay.
18. Waiting - A sit-alone-in-the-dark closer.

Nice feature from Entertainment Weekly!

http://music-mix.ew.com/2012/02/23/juli ... tay-awake/

The album is currently streaming for free at Mashable...

http://mashable.com/2012/02/27/julia-nu ... um-stream/