Image courtesy of YlvaLindberg.com.

Today, Paper Bag Records celebrates its Sweet 7 in the industry (as a certain bunch of ‘Babes might say) with the release of a free cover album, featuring many of its recording artists. Among the tracks? Sally Shapiro‘s “Dying in Africa.” Yep–it’s a cover!

“Dying in Africa” was originally recorded by Nicolas Makelberge, a Swedish synth-pop artist. As far as I can tell, he’s only released one album–Dying in Africa, back in August of 2006.

If you want, you can hear many of the album tracks on his label’s site, which I strongly recommend. The entire record is well-done; a highly stylized, slightly darker collection of throbbing, ’80′s-inspired pop tunes.

Not only did I fall for the original artist and album, but the artwork as well.  There was something about the cover’s clean lines and sophisticated style (see above) that really stuck a chord with me. After some more digging around on the label’s website, I found that the album layout was conceived by Ylva Lindberg, the same artist behind Friday Bridge‘s Bite My Tongue.

With that, I effectively discovered an artist, an album, and a graphic designer of my liking all in one go.

Très neat.