
As we noted over the weekend in The Year's Best Coverfolk, Part 1: Tribute Albums and Cover Collections , it's been a good year for full-album coverage. Overall, though, despite the fact that, in terms of sheer mass, covers from tributes overwhelm singletons in my collection, what I've found this year is that a significant majority of the songs that lingered, and demanded overplay, came from a mixed bag of borderline genre albums and single shot coverfolk tracks, via the usual sources, from YouTube, Soundcloud, studio appearances, website and bandcamp singles, and more. [...]

Producer, inventor, photographer, bioengineer, and singer-songwriter Prem Midha moonlights as a casual cover artist on YouTube. But unlike the tens of thousands of kitchen-table amateurs and wanna-bes that pepper the medium, after three years honing his craft online, and more as a member of Georgia Tech a capella group SympVibes , Midha's warm, clean tenor is pitch-perfect for both early James Taylor-esque folk crooning and acoustic boy-band vocalpop, with control that rivals some of the finest performers on the million-dollar circuit. Pair it with crisp, mellow guitarplay and crystal-clear production, and you [...]