Today I had the opportunity to browse through a major media store in Paris. La Fnac is the same idea as Best Buy in the US, so I was surprised to find a complete Indie section. Even more surprising was that the French store's picks for best new bands in that section were essentially the same as what is considered best new Indie music in the US. So my hopes of discovering a great new European band were initially shot as I looked at row after row of Arcade Fires, Sufjans, Devendras and other Pitchfork babies. I didn't have any luck in the "Variete Francaise" section either (In the US music stores are divided into style sections, and sometimes an International section; in France the sections are the same, except that the International section is replaced with the French section, indicating that most of the music purchased is from outside the country.) Finally I resorted to giving a chance to any album that had a cool cover at the store's listening station. I heard a lot of decent stuff, but Half Asleep was so tantalizingly beautiful that I dropped my Euros and walked out with the CD. I'll write more about the slo-core on natural instruments belgian duo soon, and you should expect more European underground bands to make their way into the TreasureTunes display case as I follow the leads that I gathered in Paris.