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A Cappella Supergroup Pentatonix Covers Leonard Cohen Classic. It Sends Chills up My Spine

A group of people stands in a vast, snowy landscape under a cloudy sky, holding large, blank signs.

Watch a cappella sensation Pentatonix perform Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” … and I think the late Mr. Cohen would approve.

We see the group walking along a desert. There are five members – four men and a woman. The men are Ari Kaplan, Scott Hoying, Mitch Grassi, and Kevin Olusola. The woman is Kirstin Maldonado. The men are headed toward Maldonado, who is standing by themselves. Their take on this Leonard Cohen classic is pretty amazing and it does not fail to make chills run up my spine each time.

Their story is a pretty cool one. Maldonado, Grassi and Hoying all grew up together, going to the same Texas high school. Their post-high school trajectory is like many others – they drifted apart but then they got back together, and decided to do a singing competition called “The Sing-Off.” Not content to just be a trio, they added two others, Kaplan and Olusola. They won that competition despite having just met as a group literally days before their audition.

Now the rest is history. They have over 13 million subscribers on YouTube, and they are far from pigeonholed as doing only one genre. Recently they covered John Lennon, Queen, and… get ready for this one… Daft Punk.

Got a soft spot for Leonard Cohen? You can pick it up on AmazonAd and we get a small share, too.