A Cappella Groovin'

[Elekidkid]

Pitch Perfect is huge and its sequel is coming out in a few weeks; The Sing Off has had five successful seasons; Tight vocal harmonies are starting to become more present in popular music. As a genre that, ostensibly, has been around for as long as music has existed, I'm sure I'm not the only person on Smogon that's aca-crazy about this music! So why not share some good tunes that you've heard? If you're in a group with some YouTube videos, post 'em up! It'd be great to see some new stuff and get exposed to what else is out there!

So here are a few of my favorites:

• Pentatonix goes without saying. They've redefined the way many groups approach contemporary a cappella and their Daft Punk medley snagged them a Grammy for best instrumental or a cappella arrangement.
• The SoCal VoCals are a great, consistently good a cappella group from the University of Southern California. I'm a big fan of this video, in particular: a cover of "Ev'rybody Wants to be a Cat" from the Aristocats.
• And, for a shameless plug, I've got a remote group on YouTube (me and a bunch of friends live all over the place, so we record remotely in our apartments and mush it all together). Probably of most interest to you all is our cover of the Pokémon Theme, but all of our stuff has a nerdy bent to it.

So let's hear what you all like! Barbershop, contemporary a cappella, chants... anything!

 

[Jimbo]

I used to really like going to the a cappella concerts when i was in college. The best song I've heard though is Cosmic Love (florence + the machine) by the UMD Faux Paus:

so good!

 

[Bughouse]

I sang in a group for two years in college before getting too busy

Here's a collection of tons of my favorite performances off the beaten path (ie not Pentatonix)

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Penn has a crapton of good a cappella (and I could post dozens from Penn alone - check out Dischord, Counterparts, Masala, Atma, and Shabatones, though just about every Penn group is at least ok. My old group got worse after I left. Coincidence? ;] ) but this is probably my favorite performance to come out of any group at my school in the past few years cuz Swaroop is just so freaking good:

It's the King's Singers. Duh:

High quality and comedy, what could be better:

I wish the soloist went into music instead of med school (I literally googled her years back when I saw this). I'd buy her record:

Two performances from an ICCA set by a favorite of mine, I know the second soloist. Look up way more of their videos. I also like On the Radio, Grace Kelly, Forget You, Womanizer, and many more:

Kick ass, super tight girl group with a ridiculous soloist:

Awesome ICCA set by a group I know well (mostly alumni, not people in this video). Like the Emory group, I recommend a ton of their other songs. Gaga medley, Cowboy Casanova, and a video that sadly they took down that sounded amazing but didn't sync with the video. Combine this with the earlier Yale video and plenty of other groups (well known ones like Duke's Men, Spizzwinks (<-- click me), Whiffenpoofs, Red Hot and Blue, but heck the unknown ones too like Proof of the Pudding) and I feel pretty confident in saying Yale has the best collegiate a cappella scene in the US:

My fave performance that came out of A Cappella Academy though you should look at them all (also this is proof that I don't only care about soloists if it seemed that way):

I'd happily dig up more haha. I love a cappella and have had many friends involved in it