Hilang Child :: "Gold Isle" and "Green Arrow"

The most delicate pop in the world emerges from the mind and hands of Ed Riman, the architect of Hilang Child. Giving nods to Bon Iver, early Rogue Wave, and Fleet Foxes, Hilang Child builds a Jenga tower of silky vocals and seemingly distant instruments, all so precariously placed and tenuously settled that it seems the whole thing could collapse in a moment. But it holds together with a specific and gentle gravity, the glittering flourishes of "Gold Isle," a worldly pop song equal to anything in the Justin Vernon universe. Amid all the fragility lies a central firmness, a timelessness even, and just because everything feels like it might break doesn't mean it's broken.

Hilang Child :: "Chaturanga"

The NPR-pop of Hilang Child recalls the most life-affirming moments of bands like Fleet Foxes and Stornoway. Debut song, "Chaturanga" features vocals that are at once warm and cold, echoing against a sparse piano progression that somewhat relentlessly opens its lens wider and wider until expansive "ahhs" bring the song's whole universe into focus, a gigantic and somehow undistorted fish-eye. The Hilang Child EP, First Writings is available for free download through the band's Bandcamp.

Bowerbirds :: "Tuck The Darkness In"

It could be complicated, you see, not something like these trope-driven Hollywood stories where happiness or misery feel predestined, granted or given. The resolution of your internal disjoints could be a poly-narrative, something irritatingly post-modern, assigned and read in a 300-level Comparative Literature class; something you took to complete your minor in English and never totally enjoyed. But now this is your life. That story within a story, your reading for semiotic forms, your deconstructionism, you are left to reason it out. Bowerbirds, a folk outfit that doesn't always play folk music, suggest embracing even these darkest contradictions. The pseudo-intellectualism that robbed you of your aesthetic sensibilities, you will have to fold it in. The memories of your formative years, alternately dulcet and dark, will have to exist each. "Tuck The Darkness In" aims at exactly this moment, what they call "before the weight was on our shoulders ... before I knew time was such a swindler". Sure, it is death that hangs over all of us, the one lasting architect of narrative that even the most creative artists in the Western tradition couldn't kill. But Bowerbirds live in the moment between aging and getting old, a song that begins in the Andrew Kenny school of hushed folk and ends with a crashing conclusion that should make Fleet Foxes suitably embarrassed about their catalog. The conclusion? Death is upon us in every moment, yes, but even the most inescapable truths can be put aside, or better, brought close like the covers under our chins.

Listen :: Bowerbirds - "Tuck The Darkness In"

Yukon Blonde :: "Fire"

"They're setting fire to the ocean", Yukon Blonde warn us. Now, barring the oil-spill-lightning-strike scenario, this is probably figurative language of the suspend-the-laws-of-physics-the-world-is-melting type. The stakes are, as they recently seem to be, high. As a point of clarification, or simply to up the ante, the band closes its list of things that are being set ablaze with the chilling one-liner, "They're setting fire to my face". Summarized as an English sentence: It's the apocalypse. But, the edge of disaster never quite sounds so bad, as warm acoustic guitars and golden harmonies that evoke The Stills at their most alt-country or Family Of The Year, make Yukon Blonde's "Fire" a perfect summer single. Think of a less dishonest Fleet Foxes, or driving windows down into the setting sun, getting damn close and hot as hell.

Yukon Blonde - Fire by killbeat music

Auditorium :: "Sunday"

Will Sheff's "The Presidents Dead" remains one of the best (and weirdest) weekend songs of all time, describing the dilating wake up; bacon hissing, coffee great, spring on the wind, all against the backdrop of a fictional assassination. Auditorium opens "Sunday" with a similar lyric, "Sunday, we woke up and you made us coffee/I don't tend to drink it/but everything that touches your hands/is slowly becoming the things that I want and need to be part of the plan." This is, of course, not love in a time of loss, but rather love on Prospect Park West, where the city sings and skies open up with the massing crowd, one that we imagine is now moving and singing in time. Opening whistles evoke a Chutes Too Narrow-era Shins but Auditorium spins something far more baroque and layered. The instrumentation boils down to compartmentalized acoustic guitar progression with the fireworks taking the form of three and four part vocal harmonies. Think of Fleet Foxes directed to singing original a cappella arrangements in the archway of their college dormitory, and, oddly enough, this is a compliment to Auditorium's throw back pop. Blinking awake, scents of coffee from the kitchen, sun blazing optimism through the curtains, it only takes 2:03 to realize how perfect this all is.

Fleet Foxes :: "White Winter Hymnal" (in which we meditate the over-commodification of indie rock)

Has Sub Pop been secretly releasing the same record for the last five years? That's unfair. But at times Fleet Foxes sound like a Shins cover-band playing songs off Pet Sounds. Throw some Oh Brother Where Art Thou? in there while we're in a name-checking frenzy.

Fleet Foxes are, of course, more than just a cobbling of influences. They've been featured in the heaviest music publications and on the up-and-coming gangsta of the yuppie music scene ... NPR! (Holy shit! It's All Songs Considered! ) My Dad even looked over at me when "White Winter Hymnal" spun through the radio speakers two weeks ago. He didn't say anything and he didn't need to. It's inoffensive and delicate in all the right places. It's good new music for people that don't really have time to go find good new music. It's underrated and over-publicized. It's major label indie. Everything has officially lost its collective mind. Read that one more time.

Which is why, like Natalie Imbruglia, I'm torn. Is this song more than just okay? There's a 12% that this is really good. If it was self-released and not getting the Sub Pop treatment, would anyone be talking about it? How do we reconcile this stuff? How long does the jury stay out on this? Or have we gone all OJ Simpson 1994 (your second 90s pop culture check of the paragraph) and the jury is back - they've just made the wrong call. It's a little record and it's getting pushed big. At what point will "indie" be short for "industry" not "independent?" The world is upside down. This was the dream the revolution built. And I might be okay with that.

Listen :: Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal