A sun-kissed swathe of country guitar; a delicately plucked companion piece running rings around desert cacti and the bleached skeletons of innumerable lost souls; a sole chime of a triangle: The Weird Weeds’ music - lusciously captivating without ever resorting to overblown tendencies - is both as weird as their band name would imply and as gorgeous as anything sold under the current genre-de-jour of ‘free folk’. It is both stripped naked and full of body; spiritually fulfilling and foot-tappingly catchy. It is, simply, great.

‘Fifty Dollars’, track two of ten here, winds down with a flourish of early Floydisms, but not all that much of Hold Me looks to music past to progress. Sure, there are moments of relatively straight folk here, and of proggy, almost stoner excess - ‘Castor Plants’ threatens, at least once, to build into a Comets On Fire-styled psyche-prog epic; ‘Bachelor Party’, likewise - but much of this is, well, too weird to render such comparisons entirely valid. There will be songs here that sound like nothing your ears have ever heard before. Songs like ‘Hold Me/Popcorn Trees’ can only be described as shimmering - that inviting oasis in a desert of never-ending nothingness. Here, obviously, the desert is the music we’re forever force-fed; that we’re told is new, exciting, and passionate. Hell to that say this Texan trio, and you’d be wise to heed their words: there’s more out there, more here, than on the contemporary hit parade. More magic and wonder than the racks of a high-street record store. More craftsmanship and care and love than a hundred records sold on the back of mega-budget marketing campaigns to people that are nothing more than passive pawns in a greater game beyond their control.

To repeat something above: there will be songs here that sound like nothing your ears have ever heard before. If that’s not a recommendation then I’ve no idea what is. Under expansive skies of purest blue and above ground cracked into sinewy veins by the unforgiving sun, these songs come alive. They live, and breathe, like you or I; don’t stifle them, encourage them out of their magical world of mystery and into your home. Once there, you’ll never want them gone.

Click here, and offer an invitation their way.