An impressive orkestar of Balkan brass instrumentation brings listeners into the strange surrealism of Seattle's Running and Punching, reminding me of Beirut's debut album "The Gulag Orkestar"--or even more accurately, the lesser-known Albuquerque duo A Hawk and a Hacksaw, who played on Beirut's first album. It's wonderful to hear a resurgence of Balkan/Slavic music in indie rock, and Running and Punching does it with no small expertise, even occasionally switching from eights to sevens (rhythmically speaking) and maintaining a wonderful dialogue between drum and trumpet with occasional contributions from others, such as electric guitar. The singer sings not in Zak Condon's powerhouse tenor vibrato, but instead, in a soft echoing voice that pulls you in and makes you eager to absorb "Something Russian's" strange poetry.