By Geoffrey Himes September 11

One has to go way back to the years before the Beatles Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967 to find a time when singles overpowered albums as they do today. Now you only have to look to the All Things Go Fall Classic, an alternative-rock festival at Union Market on Saturday. Three of the top acts Future Islands, Bear Hands and Tove Lo have taken a big leap this year thanks to one particular song going viral.

For Baltimore band Future Islands, that song was Seasons (Waiting on You). After the band performed it on The Late Show With David Letterman in March, the video of lead singer Sam Herring doing his chest-thumping gorilla dance as he achingly sang, Ive been waiting on you became a YouTube sensation and helped lift the song to No. 37 on Billboards alternative songs chart.

For Tove Lo of Sweden, the song was Habits (Stay High). The video of the singer downing gallons of liquor as she tells her ex, I gotta stay high all the time to keep you off my mind helped propel the song to No. 20 on the same chart. And for Brooklyn-based Bear Hands, it was Giants. The videos jittery editing of writhing, scantily clad women echoed the contrast between the staccato, angst-ridden verses and the more optimistic, hook-laden refrain, I am loving you more. That tension elevated the tune to No. 8.

More than ever, people are consuming music one song at a time, says Bear Hands guitarist and producer Ted Feldman. There are a million artists in the world. Theres only so much time, and all those artists are competing for everyones ears. So its far more likely that one song will grab those ears than a whole album. You hope that that one song is a foot in the door that gets you more attention.

Thats the world we live in, agrees Will Suter, one of the four founders of All Things Go, a Washington-based music Web site that has evolved into a major live-music promoter. People have shorter attention spans now. Theyll fall in love with one song, and theyll listen to that over and over again. The new Future Islands album is called Singles for a reason they get it.

The renewed emphasis on one breakthrough song has created a conundrum for the alternative rock that All Things Go emphasizes on its Web site and is featuring in its first music festival. How can you create a sound unlike usual rock and also connect with a large audience? Or develop a multifaceted personality through multiple songs when many listeners know you for only one song?

Feldman refuses to accept such either/or premises.

I dont really understand people who say they dont care what the audience thinks, he says by phone from the road. Were not writing to the lowest common denominator, but we do want to connect with an audience who can get the song from top to bottom. No one wants to hear a song that they can guess how the rest of it goes the first time they hear it. We want to join the cultural conversation by speaking the common language, but we want to add something new.

Giants began as so many Bear Hands songs do with lead singer Dylan Rau improvising lyrics to a simple drum-and-keyboard loop. But there was something about this effort that got the quartet excited.

The rest is here:

All Things Go Fall Classic debuts at Union Market