Scotland alternative pop band We Were Promised Jetpacks appeared on the indie music radar last year when the band went on tour with indie rock band Frightened Rabbit. Now the buzz around We Were Promised Jetpacks is getting louder thanks to their new debut album These Four Walls. The album features a mixture of alternative rock, post punk and indie pop music, at times reminiscent of the Editors, The Strokes.

No good explanation can be found online for the origin of the band's name, but it does, and yet also does not, seem to fit. Prefix Magazine put it nicely: "Their name, though quite clever, indicates that they might traffic in the nerd rock of They Might Be Giants or the hipster pop of Phantom Planet. When the earnest voice of Adam Thompson first cuts through the thin veneer of dissonance that blankets nearly every song on These Four Walls, it is almost disorienting."

In addition to Thompson, band members include Michael Palmer (guitar), Sean Smith (bass) and Darren Lackie (drums). The Glasgow band was 'discovered' when folks at Fat Cat Records - label of Sigur Rós, Múm, Animal Collective, The Twilight Sad - had heard some of We Were Promised Jetpacks music on MySpace while browsing the friends section for Frightened Rabbit (who, by the way, are also signed with Fat Cat).

As one of the best debut albums so far this year, These Four Walls, demonstrates that We Were Promised Jetpacks are a band to watch.

"Quiet Little Voices" - We Were Promised Jetpacks from These Four Walls (2009)

"Conductor" - We Were Promised Jetpacks from These Four Walls (2009)

Labels: Bands to Watch 2009, Scottish Bands, We Were Promised Jetpacks