The inaugural Bunbury Music Festival — three days of top-shelf Alternative music at Cincinnati's riverfront Sawyer Point Park — is just three days away. All this week, CityBeat's music blog will be featuring samples from some of our "sleeper picks" for the fest, artists who some may not be as familiar with as they are Weezer or Death Cab for Cutie or Jane's Addiction. Our next "sleeper" is Alberta Cross, performing Saturday at 1:30 p.m. on the Globili Stage.Alberta Cross is the brainchild of guitarist/vocalist Petter Ericson Stakee and bassist/vocalist Terry Wolfers, British expatriates now based in Brooklyn. The duo, fleshed out by a variety of rotating personnel, started the band six years ago and quickly secured some impressive gigs; in 2008, the band opened for Oasis on its massive UK tour and, in 2009, the year of their full-length debut Broken Side of Time, Alberta Cross played the festival trifecta: Coachella, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza. Stakee’s tremulous voice has been favorably compared to Jim James and Neil Young, a perfect complement to the band’s expansive Pop/Rock vibe that suggests a confluence of The Verve, Smashing Pumpkins and Brian Wilson. Songs of Patience, the anticipated sophomore album from Alberta Cross (the band’s name is an as-yet unrevealed anagram), will be released next week; advance notice hints that it could be among the year’s best. Click here for the full stream of Songs of Patience (via Rolling Stone) or check out the album's first track, "Magnolia," below.Tickets and full info on the Bunbury music festival can be found here.

The inaugural Bunbury Music Festival — three days of top-shelf Alternative music at Cincinnati's riverfront Sawyer Point Park — is just four days away. All this week, CityBeat's music blog will be featuring samples from some of our "sleeper picks" for the fest, artists who some may not be as familiar with as they are Weezer, Death Cab for Cutie or Jane's Addiction. Our first "sleeper" is 1,2,3, performing Saturday at 2:15 p.m. on the Bud Light Stage. Pittsburgh duo 1,2,3 (they go “full band” for live shows) took off fairly quickly, earning accolades in the U.K. that led to live shows abroad, all within a year of forming. One listen to the band’s debut LP for Frenchkiss Records, last year’s New Heaven, should make it clear why — 1,2,3’s songs hook listeners instantly with an uncanny sense of melody that suggests a lifetime of absorbing the magical Pop of the masters, from Bacharach and Nilsson to The Kinks and of Montreal. Add in Nic Snyder’s soulful and elastic voice and a dynamic backdrop of odd atmospherics, off-kilter beats and unexpected sounds and you have one of the more perfectly original Pop bands in America today. Here's the band's music video for the track "Work":Tickets and full info on the Bunbury music festival can be found here.