The Canadian indie-folk band Great Lake Swimmers’ 2018 full-length “The Waves, the Wake” found Tony Dekker and company expanding the band’s sound by eschewing the acoustic guitar and instead filling its sound with harp, lute, cello, flute, pipe organ, marimba, banjo and other instruments.

The songs were beautiful (as Great Lake Swimmers songs always are) and the lush arrangements pointed to a potentially exciting new path forward. After a decade and a half of putting out a good album every two or three years, however, the band went relatively quiet for a while.

Nearly five years later, Great Lake Swimmers are back with their eighth album, “Uncertain Country,” released in April. Once again, the songs are reliably gorgeous — a cross between slowcore giants Low and the hushed folk-pop of Fleet Foxes, you might say — but this time, they simmer with a sense of anxiety rooted in more than just the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Even before the world turned upside down,” the band says, “Dekker felt mired in uncertainty: from the climate crisis and the ever-changing political landscape to deep shifts within the music industry.”

But oh man are the songs pretty. Did I mention they’re pretty? Welcome back, Great Lake Swimmers.

Great Lake Swimmers: 8 p.m. Friday, doors open 7 p.m., $18, Volcanic Theatre Pub, 70 SW Century Drive, Bend, volcanictheatre.com.