If one chooses to wander off the beaten path they’ll be drawn to the eerie tunes drifting over the dark side of the hill. Conjuring images of playful ghosts and ghouls, Phantods’ melodies are driven into the heads of all who come near. This band of macabre minstrels makes unique music palatable to the widest range of listeners while embracing mankind’s most passionate disorders and metaphysical fixations. Sonically fueled by steam engines of the Victorian age, passengers bear witness to their unique blend of melodic and monstrous songs.

With their latest release in 2009, this quartet from Columbus, OH continues to write, record, and tour, attracting exceedingly wide and diverse crowds. Phantods is comprised of vocalist Gretchen King, guitarist Daniel Hagquist, bassist Nathan Jacobs, and drummer Kenan Edler. Together they form an entity of pleasing reverberations that serve a mutual raison d’etre. Their auditory aesthetic paints a cinematic landscape of ghostly encounters, jilted lovers and homicidal urges—a skeletal embrace that happily deflects away from traditional pop structures and delves straight into the bizarre and abstract. Simply put, this is probably the most pleasantly unique form of music to come out of Columbus in a long time, and it’s accessible to just about anyone. When listening to this fusion of free-will in the shape of four musicians, the fruits of their labors are evident, as well as astounding, in both their inventiveness and expansive scope. Here is something that will cause you to pause—something new, unexplainable and against all odds. Here are Phantods.