Tilly and the Wall

This past June, New York City-based label Team Love released its first album, Tilly and the Wall’s Wild Like Children. In addition to an in-store release, the entire Tilly album was made available on the label’s website, (www.team-love.com) in mp3 format, completely free of charge.

Team Love will be making all of their music freely available and in doing so aims to refute the record industry assertion that downloading hinders sales and success. The label was founded in late-2003 by Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst and manager Nathaniel Krenkel. The decision to make the music free is especially notable because of their serious indie rock cred. It could be a sign of things to come from other labels. Although it’s still early, free has been working very well for Tilly so far: the album is selling well, and Tilly shows have been packed with enthusiastic fans– it’s an extremely fast start for a new band.

The Tilly album has been on rotation here at Downhill Battle for the past couple months; we recommend heading over to team-love.com and listening for yourself. Team Love’s second release, Willy Mason’s Where the Humans Eat is scheduled to come out this October. And you can catch Tilly and the Wall on tour this fall with Rilo Kiley and Now It’s Overhead (check the website for tour dates). I’ll be posting more updates over the next couple months about how Tilly and Team Love are faring.

Downhill Battle’s Rebecca Laurie also interns at Team Love in New York City, where she lives. You can peep her at points in the Tilly and the Wall video for Reckless .