BAND CRUSH: AVA LUNA

Prepare your ears: listening to Brooklyn's Ava Luna is a totally new kind of musical experience. The group began as a college bedroom project from founders Carlos Hernadez and Nathan Tompkins; since then, it's grown into a 7-piece group, incorporating old high school friends and collecting other musicians along the way.

Now, the eclectic band is a toe-tapping, get-up-and-dance type musical outfit that manages to hopscotch between genres like jazzy pop, soul, and electro-inflected funk, to name a few. According to Hernandez, their distinct sound has evolved naturally over the years. "It started out as just an experiment: how far can we go with just one synthesizer, a keyboard, and vocal harmonies?" he said. "Then, after a while, we added another keyboard, a bass, and the sound has gotten fuller in a natural way."

And what about all the inevitable Dirty Projectors comparisons? For Hernandez and the rest of the group, it's a compliment. "Dirty Projectors was a major influence, just because I think there's so much potential in the idea of using vocal harmonies," he said "But even more so, the other really big influence is going back to my own personal roots, which is classical soul music."

With all these different sounds, it's easy to dismiss the idea as too much of a good thing. But in the case of Ava Luna, we can't get enough.

Listen to Ava Luna here.