NPR : World Cafe

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Bright Moments On World Cafe

Multi-instrumentalist Kelly Pratt has recorded and toured with bands like Coldplay, Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem and Beirut since 2006, but he's stepped into his own spotlight since forming the sunny pop band Bright Moments.

Pratt started writing while on tour, and first released a solo disc in 2008 under the name Team B, but found himself restricted to recording solely on his laptop. Wanting to make music without the limitations of a tour schedule, he formed the solo project Bright Moments. By 2010, he was recording by himself in his Brooklyn apartment, and later recruited musician friends from Beirut, Spoon and Akoya Afrobeat to aid in recording and production.

The result is Natives, released in February. The album fuses electronic, folk and rock music — and, as a result of his career as a touring musician, much of the songs involve travel narratives. Natives highlights Pratt's songwriting and vocal efforts, while also showcasing his love of brass and wind instruments.

In this session of World Cafe, Pratt discusses the new album, his inspiration for certain songs on Natives and the source of his new project's name with host David Dye.

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