Nat Kendall and Paige Rasmussen would like to pigeonhole Songbird Sing as hip hop, but that wouldn’t be quite fair to the record. True, there’s beats and Kendall passes the emcee smell test, but overall, the disc, content to let Rasmussen’s soaring vocals do the grunt work, is much too melodic to be strictly hip hop. Think Dido with a DJ. It’s more rainy-day coffee house music than head bobbing dance hall. That being said, Rasmussen and Kendall work well together and the album’s subhead, truest stories of the broken heartist, embodies the tales of lost love that compose the album’s primary lyrical base. The duo has spent nearly two years at work on the album and it shows – not so much in production, although it is spot on – but in the crescendo generated by the album’s track order. “all I got” number one, is pretty mellow, something you’d expect to hear as background music in Belltown. But by the time “on again,” and “please hold on” roll around two-thirds of the way through the album, Kendall is considerably more energetic in his delivery and Rasmussen is letting her voice fly. By the end, the intensity levels have returned to their pre-album levels. It’s like one giant hip hop bell curve, the most beat heavy songs falling in the middle and the most experimental tapering off the ends. Rasmussen and Kendall plan to tour together later this summer but no word about whether a Seattle stop is in the mix. You’ll know as soon as we do.