Download This: The Harvey Girls Cover Random ’80s Songs

Download This scours the web’s dark corners for cool cover freebies. View past installments.

Despite their misleadingly-gendered name, The Harvey Girls are a husband and wife duo originating from Lawrence, KS. In their bio, they highlight ABBA, The Shangri-Las and Prince Paul (producer of De La Soul and Queen Latifah) as musical influences. Suffice to say, they have eclectic musical taste.

Their psych-pop eclecticism comes to the fore on their ’80s covers album Our History Is Your Kitsch. We featured album highlight “White Wedding”, in the past, but the rest of the album stands almost as tall. The song selection seems as if they took the first 8 songs that came up in an iPod shuffle and decided to cover them. Again…eclectic.

They open with a surprisingly faithful version of “Goodbye Horses”, a song that famously soundtracked Buffalo Bill’s “tucking” scene in The Silence of The Lambs. Their slow, contemplative “Burnin’ For You” beats the Blue Öyster Cult original hands down. And good luck recognizing their acoustic take on Bad Brains’ “Sailin’ On” without checking the tracklist. Occasionally they do miss the mark, but maybe the Alan Parsons Project’s “Don’t Answer Me” is just too crappy to save. Overall, the band takes a varied set of ’80s songs and makes them sound as if they belong together. No easy task! The official links are dead, but we’ve got all the tracks for you below.

MP3: The Harvey Girls – Goodbye Horses (Q Lazzarus)
MP3: The Harvey Girls – Burnin’ for You (Blue Öyster Cult cover)
MP3: The Harvey Girls – Scissors (Barbara Manning cover)
MP3: The Harvey Girls – Sailin’ On (Bad Brains cover)
MP3: The Harvey Girls – Walking the Cow (Daniel Johnston cover)
MP3: The Harvey Girls – Don’t Answer Me (The Alan Parsons Project cover)
MP3: The Harvey Girls – White Wedding (Billy Idol cover)
MP3: The Harvey Girls – Take Meta Mars (The Flaming Lips cover)

Check out more from the Harvey Girls on their website.