How Heptown Helped Movits! get on TV in the US

If you attended the ten year anniversary of Club HepCat in Lund you caught a performance by Movits!, a Swedish jazz/swing/hiphop act.

Movits at Club HepCat. Photo by Malin Sjöberg.

As always, we bought some copies of their cd "Äppelknyckarjazz" to carry in the store. We sold one or two, then all of a sudden all the cd's we had in stock were gone. When we checked, we saw that they had all been sent to addresses in the US. What the heck?

After some detective work Håkan found this post on aurgasm.

“Django guitar, windy street swing; music for both art directors and for your mother” is how MOVITS! describe their sound. Well-known in Sweden, but unheard of elsewhere, they fold together elements of 1930’s big band swing, roma swing and rhythm & blues, then drop hiphop vocals on top for some serious energetic firepower. The ability to seamlessly interweave a number of genres reminds me of The Cat Empire, but while MOVITS! could relax on their catchy beats, they expertly drop variations (i.e. 2:00 in the video above) that’ll keep you smiling throughout the song.

And it the comments section we noticed that someone had found out that we sold their cd and shipped internationally. Anyone outside Europe who wanted to order the album could only get it from hepcat.se. So that's why we got all these orders...

We sold all the records we had in stock and tried to order more. The label didn't have any more records and neither did their distributor, but we finally got some directly from the band.

But then we ran out of "Äppelknyckarjazz" again and we are now waiting for the re-pressing of the album.
This is not just because of the blog. Movits! were guests on American TV show the Colbert Report this Monday.

Movits! with Colbert.

Click below to see Movits! on the Colbert Report. The first clip is the interview, the second is their performance of "Fel Del Av Gården".

Movits! Interview

Movits! "Fel del av gården"


The news of American interest in Movits! was first brought to the bands attention when we called them and asked for more records.

The news of Movits! performance on American TV and the heads up they got from HepTown Records has been reported by the following sources;
Their record label BDpop; Movits! intar New York!
Norrbottenskuriren; The Colbert Report bokar Movits!
Whoa.nu; Movits i New York på Colbert Report!
Sydsvenskan; Movits slutsålt efter succé
Helsingborgs Dagblad; Movits succé i USA säljer slut på skivor i Lund

Click here to order "Äppelknyckarjazz".