Dead Man’s Bones - In The Room Where You Sleep
Off their self titled album.

Dead Man’s Bones is actor Ryan Gosling’s band with his friend Zach Shields.  Their debut album came out in October of this year and featured L.A.’s Silverlake Conservatory Choir.  This is a different kind of sound, Rolling Stone explained it as, “The Arcade Fire, Tom Waits and the cast of Sesame Street performing a Kurt Weill musical.”

The pair knew from the start they wanted to perform with a children’s choir, Shields says, “When we first wrote the songs, all the vocals were for the children’s choir to sing…we were never going to sing on the record. But when we were working out the parts for them, we started singing and decided to make it into a duo between us and the kids.”  And also, while touring to support the album, Gosling and Shields decided, “they’ll perform with a different choir in each city and host a talent show for local entertainers rather than have opening bands.”

Pitchfork gave the album a 7.1 out of 10 saying that, “Overall, I’m as surprised as you are with Dead Man’s Bones. So many ways for it to go wrong, but instead it’s a unique, catchy and lovably weird record, with highlights that could hold their own with the best indie singles of the year.”

The concept behind all of this is so different and fun.  Using the children’s choir on the album as well as having different choirs around the country perform with them is such an amazing idea and is so inspiring for these kids who will get the opportunity to do it.