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Real Estate Teach ‘Crime’ in Video Guitar Lesson

Real Estate, "Crime," video

Real Estate’s Atlas doesn’t arrive until March 4, but the New Jersey-bred five-piece have already mapped out a few of the album’s tracks. “Talking Backwards” landed as a proper lead single, while “The Bend” and “April’s Song” made their debut on WNYC’s Soundcheck series. Now, the band has shared a fourth piece of their upcoming LP, “Crime,” and done so in a novel way: through a guitar tab tutorial video.

Singer-guitarist Martin Courtney and guitarist Matt Mondanile are masters of tuneful, shimmering ache and, thanks to this video, soon you will be too. The clip, filmed by Charles Poekel and Brooke Salisbury and animated by Natalia Stuyk, lets Courtney and Mondanile show exactly how their styles complement each other.

The song, like the rest of Atlas, finds Real Estate at a new peak in terms of performance. In the time between 2011’s Days and the 2013 recording sessions for Atlas, the group expanded to include drummer Jackson Pollis and keyboardist Matt Kallman (formerly of Girls). Their joining, along with the guidance of producer Tom Schick (Rufus Wainwright, Sean Lennon, Low), has resulted in Real Estate’s fullest and most live-sounding record to date, an album that has muscle but never feels the need to flex.

Learn how to play “Crime” by watching the video above. As Courtney sings on the crisp track, “All will be revealed.”

To see Courtney discuss the new album while in the comfort of his own home, watch SPIN’s In My Room video with the frontman. And to pre-order Atlas, head over to iTunes or Domino Records’ Dom Mart.