Florence and the Machine: A Music Mix pick

When I first heard Florence & the Machine on last year’s indie import “Kiss With a Fist,” I wasn’t mad at their arch, catchy brand of Brit-pop — very Ting-Tings meet the White Stripes meets a domestic-violence PSA.

Now, it seems, flame-haired frontwoman Florence Welch has joined the ranks of an ever-expanding alt sorority: Girls who are part faerie. You know the ones — sometimes they carry a harp and seem like they would speak Elvish (Joanna Newsom); or they smile like sexy sister-wives and spin sweet ’60s folk melodies (Lavender Diamond).

Other times, they are murky-ambient and vaguely Halloween-y (Pocahaunted) or straight-up Kate-Bush-is-my-spirit-animal (Bat for Lashes), but they all have that misty-magickal, unicorns-are-real vibe.

It can easily turn too precious — Little House hair and cobweb-lace capes are no substitute for real songwriting — but Florence, swirly-twirly aesthetics aside, seems to have found the sweet spot between Madame Bush weirdiosity and lush, pretty pop, and I’m getting kind of excited for her full-length debut, Lungs, due out (in England, at least) July 6.

But visit her MySpace, download her EP A Lot of Love a Lot of Blood on iTunes, or watch below (I’d imbed the official “scary clown school in the woods” clip if YouTube would let me) and tell me if you feel the same:

More from EW’s Music Mix:
Dirty Projectors’ ‘Bitte Orca’: Stream it free
Pearl Jam debuts ‘Get Some’ on Conan: Watch it here
What we (and Albert Hammond Jr.) are listening to: the Postelles