Portland-based outfit Blind Pilot isn’t groundbreakingly experimental for an indie band. Their music is not edgy enough to piss off your parents or annoy your friends. It is stirringly sentimental, with swaying folk-pop melodies that softly hypnotize you.

They first appeared on the scene in 2008 with their self-released debut 3 Rounds and a Sound. It was an album for every day, any time of the year. It’s the kind of album you want to turn on when you’re driving home at night. Their follow-up album We Are the Tide was released earlier this year and is a gentle continuation, though slightly poppy-er than their debut.

Like its predecessor, the album is sweetly nostalgic like strolling down a dimly remembered street from your childhood, while still expressing what lies unsaid in the back of your head. Frontman Israel Nebeker is kinda brilliant that way. His lyrics draw you in as much as any other component of the music. It’s actually probably the band’s strongest aspect. His lyrics are not for one moment contrived but rather organic and honest. There isn’t one particular song that stands out in the album because the album as a whole is strong; it’s one of those albums that will take a while to wear out.

Tracklist

1. Half Moon
2. Always
3. Keep You Right
4. We Are the Tide
5. The Colored Night
6. I Know
7. White Apple
8. Just One
9. Get It Out
10. New York

The solo debut of Miles Kane is a murky flashback to the 1960s Brit-rock music scene. It’s an impressive breakout for an artist tightly associated with Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner, largely for their bromance baby The Last Shadow Puppets. There’s an elegant mystique about Colour of the Trap, enshrouded in booming drums and smoky-rock riffs. It’s massively epic, the kind of album that gets your heart racing for no apparent reason, especially considering that most of the songs are about romantic endeavors. Lyrics aside, it would make an apt soundtrack for a Bond film with stabbing guitars drowning in foreboding orchestrals. Even when it slows down to finger-picked acoustics and breathy vocals, there’s something spell-binding about it. Kane has reassembled a sound lodged in the gloomy crevices of the past and made it uniquely his own. Though the album is hardly without flaw, it is defining. It certainly does enough to sever him from the hip of his buddy Alex Turner and grant him forgiveness from his previous, lesser known associations. Kane is one of those artists that develops in increments; he’s only getting better. Personally, I think it’s only a matter of time before he’s considered one of the coolest dudes on the Brit-rock stage.

Tracklist

1. Come Closer
2. Rearrange
3. My Fantasy
4. Counting Down the Days
5. Better Left Invisible
6. Quicksand
7. Inhaler
8. Kingcrawler
9. Take the Night From ME
10. Telepathy
11. Happenstance
12. Colour of the Trap

If you have a weakness for folk-injected indie-pop concoctions I suggest you check out Virginia Beach natives We Are Trees. They sport the same sort of shimmering buzz-drenched pop sensibility as many lo-fi artists but it’s cleaner. Crisper. It’s cleared out the mud and snare that causes sounds to pool together in a 1960s evocative manner (which I happen to love but this is different). They’ve released two EP’s thus far, aptly titled “Boyfriend” and “Girlfriend” because their subject matter delves into the realms of juvenile relationships. It’s nothing sonically transcendent or thematically profound. It’s just pure, simple, delightful fun. There’s something innocently experimental about them. Each song is versatile, airy and fresh, choosing from a broad range of influence. They aren’t pretentious but humbly understated. This is indie music in its most approachable form.

Sunrise Sunset

Colorado

You

I Don’t Believe In Love

When I’m With You (Best Coast Cover)

New Jersey natives Real Estate’s sophomore album Days is a bike ride through the past, through the neatly manicured suburban lawns of your childhood. It’s achingly nostalgic, grappling for a something lost forever–the ease of youth. It’s a celebration of innocence and the simplicity of youth, captured in drowsy reverb and floating rhythms.

Spaciously gentle vocals deliver a sort of wisdom of time and facing reality. In their own understated way, they fondly capture the truths and pangs of growing up. It manages to be idyllic, yet realistic. “Around in the fields we grow/with love for everyone/Dreams we saw with eyes of hope/Until that dream was gone” frontman Martin Courtney sings in opening track “Easy.” The lyrics and melodies blend so perfectly to create a strong, ineffable sentiment. You’re left with an overwhelming calm.

The album transitions from one track to the next perfectly; each song connects with the next like a continued thought or a string of memories. Perhaps one of Real Estate’s best compositions to date, “Green Aisles” profoundly captures the essence of the album: “All those wasted miles/All those aimless drives/Through green aisles/Our careless lifestyle/It was not so unwise.” “Days” is a picturesque amble through the past. Everything about it is subtle and understated, but in its profound realizations it really is a brilliant album.

Tracklist

1. Easy
2.Green Aisles
3. It’s Real
4. Kinder Blumen
5. Out of Tune
6. Municipality
7. Wonder Years
8. Three Blocks
9. Younger Than Yesterday
10. All the Same

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Fake Blues

UK duo The Big Pink has released a new single “Hit the Ground (Superman)” off their upcoming sophomore album, set to release in January. It’s a synthtastic landscape and it’s massively catchy. Check it out.

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Stay Gold

Sweet Dreams (Beyonce Cover)

Bradford Cox has a keen ability to turn his personal tragedy into melodic gold. Best known as the frontman of indie-rock four-piece Deerhunter, Cox recently released his third solo EP as Atlas Sound. Classified as pop, “Parallax” really occupies a space of its own. It’s otherworldly and dreamy yet somehow manages to find footing in something very relatable. His genius lies in mastery of texture. Cox beautifully surges digitalism and classicism with submerged vocals but without hiding behind his sonic effects. There’s something more confident about “Parallax” than his previous stuff. As emotionally driven as his music is, it emanates a unique and personal positivity, leaving you feeling more energized than broken.

Tracklist

1. The Shakes
2. Amplifiers
3. Te Amo
4. Parallax
5. Modern Aquatic Nightsongs
6. Mona Lisa
7. Praying Man
8. Doldrums
9. Angel Is Broken
10. Terra Incognita
11. Flagstaff
12. Lightworks

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Atlas Sound – Criminals
Deerhunter – Nosebleed

Manhattan duo Cults’ self-titled debut is all things brilliant and beautiful and awesome compacted into 11 distinct songs. It finds its catchiness in its old-timey-but-still-kinda-new-agey sound that reinvents itself 11 times over. It’s one of those albums that hooks your ears from the get go but gradually as you listen to it draws you in and almost brainwashes you. The lyrics and the vocals sweetly compliment each other amongst melodies that echo from a 1950’s bubblegum pop dream. They brilliantly incorporate subtle sample recordings of cult leaders speaking to their followers, but do so in such way that it doesn’t overwhelm the music but compliments it. The album is a slice of sunshine. It’s an escape. Buy it. Now. You’re missing out.

Tracklist

1. Abducted
2. Go Outside
3. You Know What I Mean
4. Most Wanted
5. Walk At Night
6. Never Heal Myself
7. Oh My God
8. Never Saw the Point
9. Bad Things
10.Bumper
11. Rave On