Grizzly Bear

Veckatimest will linger in your head; it will beautify the landscape around you before haunting your dreams and urging you to listen again. Grizzly Bear's 2009 breakthrough album has a battle of good and evil at its core: the multipart harmonies have choir-boy grace, while swells of piano, woodwinds, strings and tribal beats burst with devilish glee. Sunny waltzes reveal elusive confessions, as dark dirges mask innocent pleas. "Two Weeks," "Ready, Able" and "While You Wait for the Others" are essential, but you won't be truly spooked and stirred without listening to the rest.

Already a front-runner for 2009's most gushed-over art-rock record, the third disc from this
Brooklyn quartet has a sound that is completely its own: an opulent, intimate rumble built
on churning acoustic riffs, haunted croons and precise string parts. Tracks like "All We
Ask" and "Fine for Now," where singer Daniel Rossen murmurs "We're all faltering" over a
languid, jazzy shuffle, are daydreams tinged with disquiet. Then there's the foc... More >