Fleet Foxes.jpeg

1. Fleet Foxes “A Very Lonely Solstice”
2. Magdalena Bay “Mercurial World”
3. Dream Unending “Tide Turns Eternal”

Fleet Foxes, “A Very Lonely Solstice”

It’s been said here in Bandcampin’ before: Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold is one of the world’s great songwriters. His albums are packed with string sections, vocal harmonies and baroque folk-pop, but this 13-track live solo set places the spotlight squarely on his gorgeous and stirring melodies and lyrics. Recorded in a dimly lit Brooklyn church on the winter solstice of 2020, just as the city was tightening COVID-19 restrictions, “A Very Lonely Solstice” will make you feel like you’re sitting right there, watching a master at work up close and personal.

Magdalena Bay, “Mercurial World”

Magdalena Bay is a popular whale-watching spot off the western coast of Baja California Sur, Mexico. And Magdalena Bay is also a very interesting synth-pop duo from Los Angeles who have released one of 2021’s most irresistible albums, the cleverly titled “Mercurial World.” (It’s a play on a famous Madonna lyric.) Here, Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin brew up a blend of catchy bloops, bleeps and beats that somehow feel both innovative and nostalgic at the same time. So Magdalena Bay is a body of water, a band and the next step in a future-pop lineage that includes artists like Grimes and Charli XCX.

Dream Unending, “Tide Turns Eternal”

In the wild and wooly world of heavy metal and its various offshoots, musicians are constantly merging sounds, reshaping styles and pushing genres like doom and death metal into new places. Take, for example, Dream Unending, the new “dream-doom” project from Derrick Vella and Justin DeTore, integral members of the death metal bands Tomb Mold and Innumerable Forms, respectively. Together, these dudes take music that’s normally hulking and dark and blast it with a lush landscape of gauzy guitars, gothic ’80s pop atmosphere and otherworldly vibes. If there’s a Hall of Fame for albums that made heavy metal sound different, “Tide Turns Eternal” will be there someday.