About a year ago Oliver Tree Nickell, aka Tree, was a student at SF State and a self-proclaimed “SoundCloud kid” when R&S Records founder Renaat Vandepapeliere discovered his SoundCloud page. After chatting for about six months, Nickell signed with R&S and quit school to make music full time. Last week, Tree released his debut EP, Demons. In an extremely ambitious move, Tree covered Radiohead‘s “Karma Police” for the album, and turns out, he not only pulled it off – he absolutely turned it into something entirely his own. Tree’s voice and delivery are unique – he’s not really singing, not really rapping, and not really speaking. However he’s delivering his words, and the delivery is intense, containing more emotion than you may expect from a 20-yearold.

Last Friday, Paste premiered Tree’s video for “Karma Police”, which is below. The video was directed by Tree and features some great shots of Land’s End in San Francisco. You can purchase Demons on vinyl from Amazon or digitally from iTunes.