You Oughta Know: Rural Alberta Advantage

You Oughta Know is your weekly introduction to a wide range of Canadian artists who are either about to blow up ... or really oughta.

Patience is a rare virtue in today's music industry. Labels want their bands to blow up instantaneously, while artists, desperate to cash that first royalty check, see no reason to wait. But for not-so-newcomers the Rural Alberta Advantage, patience may be exactly what kept them from imploding under the pressure of being labeled one of Canada's best unsigned bands.

The group began playing as a unit in Toronto in 2005 -- despite their name, only singer/guitarist/de facto bandleader Nils Edenloff hails from Alberta.

"This band didn't really start out as being a band," Edenloff says. "We spent a lot of nights hosting a failing open-mic night together and became really good friends that way." Since their open-mic events were less-than-successful, they had plenty of time write their own music and test it on an audience.

"At the time, we were really depressed," keyboardist-singer Amy Cole says. "But in reality, [the event's failure] was a blessing in disguise because we got to spend all this time working on material that eventually became what the songs are now."

Those songs, a collection of appropriately rural snapshots of Western Canada, became their independently produced and distributed record 'Hometowns.' The album, though painstakingly crafted, sounds effortless and spontaneous -- its songs blend folksy guitar strumming, danceable beats and tales of love and loss, all set against the picturesque backdrop of Edenloff's Alberta roots.

Though many bands might describe four years of playing small-town bars and toiling at day jobs as grueling, RAA saw it as a necessary growth process. They used the time to carefully cultivate their songs, reworking each piece until it fit perfectly.

The band signed with indie heavyweight Saddle Creek in May, which has just given 'Hometowns' a proper release on July 7. The band insists its slow burn was entirely intentional -- it fielded offers from other labels but chose to put out 'Hometowns' on their own and build a fan base through touring and word-of-mouth.