And now for a new, funky artist you should totally listen to! Miami based, Toronto born singer-songwriter Tristan Clopet released his first EP Duende in 2009, opened for The Swell Season and Inner Circle and took a whirlwind 11-city tour, even playing the CBS morning show. So, he’s accomplished. Is his music good?

Tristan let us listen to his new 2010 EP Purple, which is available for download here. In the songs, Tristan plays around with a lot of different, cool styles, including my favorite (when it’s done right), funk. In songs like Proximity Bomb, in which he sounds pretty much exactly like Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, he sings with a funky edge, “Have you ever ever seen a case like this? no one knows where the off-switch is, proximity bomb.”

Tristan definitely merges funk and pop really well on this song and other funk and soul infused songs like Ethereal Evidence (this song’s background music sounds like Infectious Grooves’ Violent and Funky) and Black Panther Party. On tracks like So Alive and Love is A Question, he runs into standard singer-songwriter fare (in So Alive, he sings: “Isn’t it funny how you can love someone else, before you even love yourself?”), but his voice is so soothing yet unique (a little like Jeff Buckley’s) that it’s really hard not to listen to the entirety of this album.

Check him out and see what you think! Click “like” if you like his music!