Brooklyn-based Michael Grubbs’ project Wakey!Wakey! will release their first full length studio album Almost Everything I Wish I’d Said The Last Time I Saw You on July 2 – preceded by the single ‘Light Outside’ (June 13).

This, Grubbs’ UK debut, is the culmination of a lifelong eclectic musical education coloured as equally by the anti-folk movement of NY’s Lower East Side as a childhood absorbed in Gershwin and Brahms.

Wakey!Wakey! will bring their live set-up to the UK for a headline show at London’s Scala on June 14, having sold out The Garage twice in the past year.

Grubbs has also lent his talents on two touring musicals;

‘I’m a tall, skinny, straight guy who can sing – that’s basically gold dust in the musical theatre industry, because there’s none of us.’

Settling in New York, he then came under the guidance of Lach, a man best known as the driving force behind the Anti-Folk movement of the Lower East Side. Becoming the tutee of an icon who eschewed the piano upon first hearing the Sex Pistols – and whose movement included Regina Spektor – had quite an effect: ‘to hear someone like Regina perform with such abandon, shouting and hitting her stool with a drum stick, was priceless.’

If his time spent in New York with Lach gave Grubbs the conviction to construct his orchestral pop works, then a chance encounter with a certain Mark Schwahn proved to be his commercial vindication. Schwahn is better known as the man behind the long-running American teen-drama ‘One Tree Hill’, which has attained cult-status over its eight season run, and has been soundtracked by artists including Bon Iver, Frightened Rabbit and Dashboard Confessional. Having watched a Wakey!Wakey! live set, Schwahn was sufficiently impressed to not only soundtrack a season finale with the title track from their War Sweater EP, but to also recruit Grubbs for a recurring role on the show.

You can get a free download of Wakey!Wakey! track ‘Feral Love’ now at http://soundcloud.com/kartel/wakey-wakey-feral-love.