Damon Albarn, FKA Twigs on Mercury Prize shortlist

Today, the Barclaycard Mercury Prize shortlist of nominees was announced via Twitter, with a dozen UK artists being up for the honor of the best British album of the year, as voted on by a panel of British critics and industry authorities. It contains both familiar names (Damon Albarn, FKA Twigs) and some very, very unfamiliar ones (GoGo Penguin?), but hey, we’re American so take our surprise with a grain of salt.

The 2014 Mercury Prize nominees:

Damon Albarn – Everyday Robots
Bombay Bicycle Club – So Long, See You Tomorrow
Anna Calvi – One Breath
East India Youth – Total Strife Forever
FKA Twigs – LP1
Gogo Penguin – v2.0
Jungle – Jungle
Nick Mulvey – First Mind
Polar Bear – In Each and Every One
Royal Blood – Royal Blood
Kate Tempest – Everybody Down
Young Fathers – Dead

Last year’s winner was James Blake, for his album Overgrown. The winner of this year’s Mercury Prize will be announced on October 29.

Read our list of the 10 best Mercury Prize winners.

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Jeff Terich

Jeff Terich is the founder and editor of Treble. He's been writing about music for 20 years and has been published at American Songwriter, Bandcamp Daily, Reverb, Spin, Stereogum, uDiscoverMusic, VinylMePlease and some others that he's forgetting right now. He's still not tired of it.