Any modern music snob will tell you they know The Greatest Band You’ve Probably Never Heard Of. Someone they saw open for an up-and-comer at The Greatest Bar You’ve Probably Never Heard Of, or they discovered on The Greatest Music Website You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.
But they’re all liars.
I know The Greatest Band You’ve Probably Never Heard Of and they’re called The Khrusty Brothers–a group I unashamedly discovered on Myspace at the impressionable age of 14.
The Khrusty Brothers, of Kansas City, Missouri, only have one album (The Khrusty Brothers, released Jan. 1, 2007) and they’ve been nearly impossible to find on the internet anywhere for years, until Captain Spotify came along. 
Their music is a glorious blend of everything perfect in music today–a clean, unique tone of voice, folk instrumentation mixed with drops of machine sounds, and gorgeously narrative lyrics. They are self-diagnosed “appalachian mourntronica.” But what’s even more riveting than their unprecedented music, is their story.
The band is comprised of brothers from the Khrusty and Huffelheimer families, including Danderhauler Agamemnon Khrusty, Bud Gilgamesh Khrusty, Khorky Custer Khrusty, Hamilton Motherbrain Huffelheimer, Houdini Harris Huffelheimer, Hinus King Gustav Huffelheimer and Jonas Wilberforce Khrusty (Something tells me these are their real names, which in my opinion, is incredible.)
The Khrusty boys were particularly influenced by their father, Winston Khrusty, who taught the boys to play in his family band, Winston Khrusty and the Appalachian Mourners. Both Winston and wife Elmadora had passed away by the time the youngest of the brothers was just 14. Truly though, no one can tell the rest of The Khrusty Brothers’ story better than this and of course, this.
I hope they’ve been spending the last 7 years preparing a follow up. But in the meantime, if you’re rushing to Spotify now (which their names alone should make you do) I especially recommend “Every Time A Lie” “Whittle Down” and “On A Shelf.”
For more from The Khrusty Brothers and my four other featured artists, tune in to The Diagnosis on 90.5 FM in Columbia, on online at wusc.sc.edu.
