It's so hard to believe...

Well, I've gone and done it again. I went searching for some cool, new music to listen to. Like I don't listen to enough already, right?

It all started with that FreeCCM.com contest. As I was browsing through their list of artists, trying to pick my 5 artists, I saw a band VOTA was listed.

Now, I had heard of VOTA before, in passing, because of their touring with bands like Barlowgirl and Stellar Kart, but I couldn't recall ever hearing anything by this band. I was intrigued, and decided to find out what they sounded like.

I did a search on YouTube, figuring that there had to be something uploaded there. Sure enough, there were a few songs.

The first song I clicked to listen to was a song Alright, which is off VOTA's first album. I was shocked to discover that I had actually heard this song, several years ago when it played on K-Love radio. However, I didn't think that the band who played that song was VOTA; I thought that it was another band by the name of Casting Pearls.

As I discovered by reading VOTA's Wikipedia article, the band Casting Pearls and the band VOTA are one and the same. I also found out that VOTA also has a very interesting history.

The band Casting Pearls was started in 1997 by vocalist Bryan Olesen, bassist Case Maranville, and drummer Shane Coop. The band experienced some shuffling around of drummers, finally settling on Scott Rutz as their official drummer. In 2003, Casting Pearls met Peter Furler of the band Newsboys, becoming good friends. So good of friends that for 3 years, Olesen (vocals) became lead guitarist for the Newsboys (replacing Jody Davis).

This experience led to Casting Pearls's Inpop Records (which was founded by no other than Furler himself) self-titled debut release in 2005.

2007 also brought around another album by Casting Pearls, Live in Wichita, also under the label of Inpop.

In 2008, Casting Pearls changed their name to VOTA, due to many people's confusion between them and Casting Crowns, another Christian band. When the name was chosen, the band members really didn't really have a specific definition for the name VOTA. However, it was later discovered by a fan of VOTA that the name is actually a Latin root word for a collection of vows before God. 2008 was also a switch of labels, releasing a self-titled album (now as VOTA) under INO Records.

This may still be a young band, but they have loads of talent. Below is VOTA's music video for their single Hard to Believe. I can't wait to hear more from VOTA!