Video premiere: Matrimony's 'See the Light'

One of the first times North Carolina folk-pop band Matrimony played See the Light live, the audience started spontaneously singing the chorus a cappella.

"It was one of those moments you're always looking for when you play music, where it feels like something more than a show," says frontman Jimmy Brown. "It had almost a spiritual feeling about it."

The song became such a live favorite the group shot a video for it during a recent show at the Chop Shop in the group's hometown of Charlotte. The video premieres at USA TODAY.

Matrimony, which also includes Brown's wife, Ashlee Hardee Brown, and her brothers Jordan Hardee and CJ Hardee, will release its first album, Montibello Memories May 6 on Columbia Records.

"Montibello is the name of the street the Hardees grew up on, and I lived there for a few years," Brown says. "So a lot of stuff went on in that house — good stuff and bad stuff, people coming and going all the time, both musicians and friends."

Matrimony recorded most of the album in Nashville with Jay Joyce, who also has produced Cage the Elephant and Eric Church. The group also self-produced a few tracks, including See the Light, in Charlotte.

"It was pretty easy, mostly just piano, banjo and mandolin," Brown says of recording the track. "It didn't need a whole lot of production. We played and sang it all live, just pulled up in the faders in the mixer with our manager. It was an easy song to pull together."

Brown was raised in a Protestant area of Belfast, Northern Ireland, meeting the Browns after moving to North Carolina.

"You couldn't play Irish folk songs where I grew up," he says, "because you'd get a brick through your window."

After he moved to the U.S., he learned he could make money by singing those songs in the Irish bars. "So I learned all the Irish songs and fell in love with them, learned how good the stories are."

Though Matrimony's music couldn't be classified as Irish or Celtic, the experience of learning the traditional songs "has definitely carried on into what I'm doing now," Brown says. "A lot of people say they can hear the Irish in the melodies. I guess I can hear it a little bit, but I never really try to do that. It's just how it comes out of me."

Matrimony will play the Mercury Lounge in New York City April 30 before setting out on a national tour following the release of Montibello Memories.