Today, three songs by Vandaveer, an alt-folk band from Washington D.C. whose music is in heavy rotation in my studio lately. I love these guys.

Above: a dark, stylish video filmed for their dark, stylish version of the folk song "Pretty Polly" -- recorded for Oh, Willie, Please (2013), a fabulous album of traditional folk murder ballads.

"The macabre has long held uneasy sway over the human condition," the band's founder, Mark Charles Heidinger, explains. "From ghost stories to creation myths, from CSI to Shakespeare, from cable news voyeurism to Edgar Allan Poe, subjects of death, murder and all things ghastly have fascinated and frightened for centuries. Songs are no exception. From Old World roots to more recent incarnations in America, the murder ballad has traversed, shapeshifted and persevered. Despite our collective desire to be good and virtuous, people do very bad things. And then we sing about them."

Heidinger and singer Rose Guerin explain the project further in the atmospheric little video below.

And third: the video for "Dig Down Deep," a gorgeous song written by Heidinger, from their 2011 CD of the same name.

This last one goes out to all of you who have been as inundated with snow this winter as we've been indundated with rain here in Devon.