Brighton-based group Bat For Lashes is the spooky brainchild of youthful singer-songwriter Natasha Khan, and was recently chosen by guest curator Devendra Banhart to perform at this past spring's ATP Festival alongside such vets as Vashti Bunyan and Bert Jansch. That appearance might lead one to prematurely jump to certain freak-folk conclusions, especially when coupled with the group's supernatural, Tolkien Society-approved song titles like "The Wizard". Yet there's nothing particularly folk-like about Bat for Lashes' debut single, a curious little gothic miniature that is rife with distant thunderclaps and swirling fogbank electronics. Khan's enchanted voice and general theatrical presence have earned her some natural comparisons to a young Kate Bush, a resemblence that is perhaps refracted in this instance by the minor-key atmospherics of Portishead or Andrea Parker.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this song's subject appears to be less a wizard and more like...a vampire? "Trembling midnight lands/ I traveled with the wizard," sings Khan with glassy-eyed detachment, "Drink his blood and he's our leader." (We can only hope she isn't talking about Banhart.) On the choruses, Khan's multi-tracked vocals swoop in to form a disembodied coven/chorale above the music's flickering shadows, her deceptively sweet melodies distracting you from the ominous footsteps advancing across the darkened woodlands.