Seabear: Arctic warmth

You may know the seabear from SpongeBob SquarePants, but there's another Seabear at large. Three years after their breakthrough, Icelandic band Seabear are ready to get back in the water once again. Their new album is called We Built A Fire and nothing is going to stop them now.

Back in 2007, The Ghost That Carried Us Awayintroduced the indie masses to Seabear's lush folk and frontman Sindri Mar Sigfússon's superb songwriting.

Sigfússon is the one who put this band together, initially seeing Seabear as a solo joint before deciding to recruit other members for the ride.

Since becoming a band, Seabear’s fragile, graceful slips of songs and delicate acoustic indie-pop have plucked heartstrings, attracted comparisons to Sufjan Stevens, Elliott Smith and Arcade Fire, and given the band a leg-up beyond Iceland. Seabear have also reintroduced many to Berlin’s Morr Music label, which has been overseeing the band’s releases.

In between watching the band's star soar, Sigfússon also released Clangourlast year, a much admired solo album under the Sin Fang Bous alias.

For Sigfússon, there is a very clear difference between his two bodies of work. “The songs on the Sin Fang Bous album were created in the studio. I hadn’t written anything beforehand. It was all very spontaneous, whereas with Seabear it was a much longer collective process.

“We’ve been working for two years on this. We practised a lot and played some of the songs in front of a live audience. Then we just went into various Icelandic studios and recorded it.”

myspace.com/seabear