One band worth checking out at this weekend's Sweet Love Shower festival at Lake Yamanaka in Yamanashi Prefecture is Ykiki Beat.
The five-piece indie act will be playing tracks from its debut album "When the World is Wide," which sounds like it could've been recorded in England. The group is led by songwriter and vocalist Nobuki Akiyama, an articulate, softly-spoken individual who has a pretty impressive British accent when he sings.
"We started out doing covers and I sang with a Japanese accent," he says during an interview at Amuse Studios in Shibuya. "I studied hard and listened to lots of Western bands, and I think that helped with my pronunciation.
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