So my friend got me hooked onto this band from Norway which has utterly left my ears in ruins. It sounds like pop mixed with gothic, almost dream-like undertones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcZDL6dQA0M "A Shoulder to the Wheel"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWWj8nIv … re=related "Shimmering Warm and Bright"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqXF5sHP … re=related "The Suffering"

So my big question is, does anyone know of any other bands with a similar sound?

Pretty similar to Tori Amos, both in terms of the vocalist's voice AND the haunting qualities of the backing instruments.

I like Amos' track "caught a lite sneeze"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6IJdOcoLLs

oh, and there's like a million differing live versions of that song, as she switches up the instrumentation and style each time she performs it.

<3 Caught a Lite Sneeze.

<3 Tori.

OMFG I <3 Tori.

So is Bel Canto as awesome as Tori? I suppose I should delve deeper...

Hard for me to say, I've heard their first album in it's entirety, and it's darker, more gothic and definitely more experimental than the snippets I've heard on later albums. With that said, there's some quality stuff here. Ms. Amos is pretty cool, too, but I been on this huge fix for ethnic flavoured music lately, and Bel Canto is hitting all my weakpoints for massive, some might say obscene damage.

Birds of Passage is definitely my favorite Bel Canto album, and "Shoulder to the Wheel" is definitely the reason why I got it, but the rest of the album is good, too; I like that mix of gothic and industrial, spiritual and mechanical.

Shimmering Warm and Bright is also a decent album and piece, but I don't find the rest of the album melodically memorable.

The rest of their albums, after that, had too secular, too pop, of a sound for me, though, Rush had some ethereal pieces, but not enough to justify purchase.

...

Tori Amos, I've only listened to their most recent release, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, but didn't care for it. I'll check out her earlier discography.

She definitely loves her song, "Caught a Lite Sneeze," eh?

Carl, about that particular rendition of "Caught a Lite Sneeze" that you showed us, what album can we get that on?

Artists' earlier discographies are always best, before they sell out, aren't they?

Celtic chicks are so attractive...

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Anybody else got suggestions for gothic medieval music?

I'm inclined to agree with you after listening to their stuff after Shimmering. White Out Conditions feels really experimental to me, like they were trying to find that style they wanted. After that, Birds of Passage and Shimmering were really solid efforts. They had sunk into a style that really appealed to me. I understand that sometimes an evolution of musical stylings is going to occur, and it's not that their later stuff is bad by any means, it just isn't comprised of the elements that made their earlier stuff so remarkable. At least not to my ears.