Mighty Oaks

The indie folk trio Mighty Oaks, whose members hail from multiple countries and call Berlin, Germany home, built a following through precise three-part vocal harmonies and exuberant, mostly acoustic folk anthems that prompted frequent comparisons to the Lumineers, Fleet Foxes, and American Authors. Early-2010s viral exposure preceded the group’s first major-label release, the 2014 album Howl.

The band originated in 2010 when multi-instrumentalists and vocalists Ian Hooper from the United States, Claudio Donzelli from Italy, and Craig Saunders from the United Kingdom came together. A home-recorded EP they issued that year quickly accumulated hundreds of thousands of downloads, prompting them to enter a professional studio in 2012 for a follow-up. The resulting Just One Day EP earned enthusiastic local notices and paved the way for their debut full-length, Howl, which Universal released in early 2014. That album reached the Top Ten in both Germany and Switzerland; later the same year the band issued the Brother EP. Another album-and-EP sequence followed in 2017, with Dreamers appearing in February and the Storm EP arriving in November; Dreamers climbed to number 17 on the German album chart and entered the Top 40 in Switzerland and Austria. Can Can Recordings reissued the group’s original EP, Driftwood Seat, in 2019. Their third studio album, All Things Go, came out in February 2020, at which point they had already scheduled tour dates supporting the Lumineers later that year.