SPIN's Best Albums of 2025 (So Far)

In the period following the 2022 death of his longtime creative and matrimonial partner Mimi Parker, Low founder Alan Sparhawk sought comfort in the company of friends, as many of us do in times of unimaginable loss. In his case, those friends were fellow Duluth musicians and chart-topping bluegrass crew Trampled By Turtles, who invited Sparhawk to ride shotgun on their 2023 tour and join them onstage whenever the mood struck. That act of kindness spawned Sparhawk’s second post-Low release, whose earthy Americana arrangements and naked vocal performances contrast sharply with the electronic experimentation and vocoderized mutations of 2024’s *White Roses, My God*. Yet the two records are united through a yin-yang relationship: If its predecessor captured Sparhawk working his way through the fog and confusion of grief, *With Trampled by Turtles* sees him ready to face the world and open his heart without obfuscation. The two albums even share two songs—“Get Still” and “Heaven”—that are liberated from their DIY digital dimensions and reborn as cathartic choral hymns. The appearance of Sparhawk and Parker’s daughter Hollis on the wistful chorus of “Not Broken” is especially moving, as it highlights both the absence at the core of the record and the optimistic life-goes-on spirit that radiates from it. But even that poignant performance won’t prepare you for the emotional wallop delivered by the Dylan-esque hymn “Screaming Song,” where Sparhawk’s most pointed expressions of sorrow are washed away by a rising tide of humming harmonies and screeching violins.

If you’re surprised that *Pink Elephant*, the first album by Arcade Fire in three tumultuous years, begins with a cinematic three-minute drone that summons the deep-space sounds of Morton Subotnick, check the credits. Alongside Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, Daniel Lanois—a fellow Canadian who has applied a near-magical touch to records by U2, Bob Dylan, and Brian Eno for nearly half a century—co-produced the band’s seventh album, speckling it with stereo delays and assorted abstractions. In fact, that opener, “Open Your Heart or Die Trying,” is but one of three instrumentals on this 10-track record. Where “Beyond Salvation” embeds scrambled samples amid a fantastic glissando, “She Cries Diamond Rain” is a celestial hum. These wordless pieces from the famously righteous Montreal-based outfit suggest a band trying to reimagine its future in the present, trying to feel its way forward after personnel and personal complications since 2022’s *WE*. The title track is a web of misgivings, Butler looking at the world and making mental traps of everything he encounters. During first single “Year of the Snake,” Lanois calls back to several of the techniques he used to make *The Joshua Tree* feel both anxious and epic as Chassagne and Butler deliver a fraught duet about where they head from here. “If you feel strange, it’s probably good,” they repeat, alternately delivering that last line like it soothes or stings. They experiment with a handful of new modes here, from the dark dancing of “Circle of Trust” to the arcing acoustic grandeur of “Ride or Die.” But they finally dig into their bygone glory days for closer “Stuck in My Head,” where throbbing bass and unrelenting drums push Butler to deal with his baggage, to figure out what happens next. “Clean up your head/Get the fuck out of bed,” he shouts over and over at the climax, like Springsteen stuck in a punk paroxysm. “Clean up your heart.”

Scores of Puerto Rican artists have used their music to express love and pride in their island, but few do so with the same purposeful vigor as Bad Bunny. The superstar from Vega Baja is responsible for numerous songs that center his homeland, from unofficial national anthems like “Estamos Bien” and “El Apagón” to powerful posse cuts like “ACHO PR” with veteran reggaetón luminaries Arcángel, De La Ghetto, and Ñengo Flow. More recently, he’s been decidedly direct about his passions and concerns, expressed in vivid detail on 2024’s standalone single “Una Velita.” Positioned as his sixth proper studio album, *DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS* centers Puerto Rico in his work more so than before, celebrating various musical styles within its legacy. While 2023’s *nadie sabe lo que va a pasar mañana* validated his trapero past with a more modern take on the sound he emerged with in the 2010s, this follow-up largely diverges from hip-hop, demonstrating his apparent aversion to repeating himself from album to album. Instead, house music morphs into plena on “EL CLúB,” the latter genre resurfacing later in splendorous fashion on “CAFé CON RON” with Los Pleneros de la Cresta. Befitting its title, “VOY A LLeVARTE PA PR” is set to a sleek reggaetón rhythm for prime-time perreo vibes, as is also the case for “KETU TeCRÉ” and the relatively more rugged “EoO.” A bold salsa statement, “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” pays apparent homage to some seminal Fania releases by Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe, with traces of the instrumental interplay of “Juanito Alimaña” and an irresistible coda reminiscent to that of “Periódico de Ayer.” Regardless of style, the political and the personal thematically blur throughout the album, a new year’s gloom hanging over “PIToRRO DE COCO” and a metaphorical wound left open after the poignant “TURISTA.” As before, Bad Bunny remains an excellent and inventive collaborator, linking here primarily with other Puerto Ricans as more than a mere symbolic gesture. Sociopolitically minded indie group Chuwi join for the eclectic and vibrant “WELTiTA,” its members providing melodic vocals that both complement and magnify those of their host. Carolina natives Dei V and Omar Courtz form a formidable trio for the thumping dancehall retrofuturism of “VeLDÁ,” while RaiNao proves an exceedingly worthy duet partner on “PERFuMITO NUEVO.”

Bartees Strange’s third album finds the Washington, D.C. singer-songwriter stretching his sonic limbs further than ever before—an achievement, to be sure, since Strange’s first two records (2020’s *Live Forever* and 2022’s critical breakthrough *Farm to Table*) cemented his ability to effortlessly hop between anthemic rock, dusky blues, and rap cadences within just a few minutes. With a slightly darker sound befitting its namesake, *Horror* adds a few impressive guises to Strange’s genre menagerie: There’s the explicitly Fleetwood Mac-esque jangle of “Sober,” the melancholic trip-hop skitter of “Doomsday Buttercup,” and the lucious house thump of “Lovers,” which might count as Strange’s starkest left turn to date. Across these 12 tracks, Strange also fine-tunes his winning formula of countrified balladry and propulsive riffs, both of which are given a big-ticket pop spit-shine courtesy of contributions from studio wizards Yves and Lawrence Rothman as well as the ever-ubiquitous Jack Antonoff. Don’t mistake big names for unnecessary flashiness, though: *Horror* retains the down-to-earth POV that’s made Strange an increasingly powerful presence in indie, even as his ambitions grow.

The creation—and especially the success—of his 2024 viral hit “End of Beginning” prepared Djo, the musical alter ego of *Stranger Things* star Joe Keery, for the recording of his third album. “It was a boost of confidence and a good shot in the arm,” he tells Apple Music. “Doing a song from beginning to end in a studio and getting bit by that was like, ‘Oh man, this is how I want to do this. I don’t think I really want to try to do this in my bedroom.’” Famed New York City studio Electric Lady provided Keery and his frequent producer Adam Thein with the environment they needed. “We were using all the toys,” Keery notes. “This piece of gear was laying around, so let’s mess with it. And it ends up, it informs the whole track. There’s a lot of that going on on this record.” And so, *The Crux* was born. Unlike his past endeavors, this time he chose to focus on collaboration. “I came up musically in a time where it was Kevin Parker and Mac DeMarco and these guys who did it all by themselves. So I think for a while that was what I thought I wanted to be,” he says. “But doing this project, it made me come back to working more collaboratively, still producing stuff, but with other people. It was a real joy to have friends and family and outside musicians coming in and bringing this thing to life.” One surprising guest? Charlie Heaton, Keery’s *Stranger* love-triangle competitor, appears on the jaunty “Charlie’s Garden.” *The Crux* is filled with psychedelic beats, electronica tones, and groovy guitar licks and floats through Keery’s particular brand of twee indie pop with a blend of bright sounds and hazy nostalgia. There’s the uplifting (“Lonesome is a State of Mind”), carefree (“Basic Being Basic”), regretful (“Delete Ya”), somber (“Egg”), and bittersweet (“Crux”). And classic-rock influences abound, particularly on “Potion.” (“Love Fleetwood Mac. You can definitely hear that on that track,” he says.) Keery takes special pride in his output. “It’s my outlet for talking about my own life and my little diary,” he says. “I’m sure a lot of musicians, that’s the way that they do it. So to use it as a way to cope with what’s going on, and then especially one of my favorite parts is just, like, album order and the structure of the record as a whole. That’s one part of that journey.”

One summer night in 2022, during a break from shooting *The Crow* reboot in Prague, FKA twigs found her way outside the city to a warehouse rave, where hundreds of strangers were dancing to loud, immersive techno. The experience snapped the English polymath (singer, dancer, songwriter, actor, force of nature) out of the intense brain fog she’d been stuck inside for years—so much so that she was moved to invent a word to describe the transcendent clarity, a portmanteau of “sex” and “euphoria” (which also sounds a bit like the Greek word used to celebrate a discovery: eureka!). *EUSEXUA*, twigs’ third studio album (and her first full-length release since her adventurous 2022 mixtape, *Caprisongs*), is not explicitly a dance record—more a love letter to dance music’s emancipating powers, channeled through the auteur’s heady, haunting signature style. The throbbing percussion from that fateful warehouse rave pulses through the record, warping according to the mood: slinky, subterranean trip-hop on the hedonistic “Girl Feels Good,” or big-room melodrama on the strobing “Room of Fools.” On the cyborgian “Drums of Death” (produced by Koreless, who worked closely alongside twigs and appears on every track), twigs evokes a short-circuiting sexbot at an after-hours rave in the Matrix, channeling sensations of hot flesh against cold metal as she implores you to “Crash the system...Serve cunt/Serve violence.” Intriguing strangers emerge from *EUSEXUA*’s sea of fog, all of them seeking the same thing twigs is—sticky, sweaty, ego-killing, rapturous catharsis.

As one of rock’s most forward-thinking bands, it’s entirely fitting that Garbage—totemic vocalist Shirley Manson, multi-instrumentalists Duke Erikson and Steve Marker, and drummer Butch Vig—haven’t looked back since they reunited in 2011. Arriving over two and a half decades since their era-defining self-titled debut, 2021’s thrilling *No Gods No Masters* was the sound of a band in the midst of a late-career purple patch. They keep the momentum rolling on this eighth album. Where *No Gods No Masters* surveyed the wreckage of a world mired in chaos, *Let All That We Imagine Be the Light* is an album determined to muster hope and optimism. That’s not to say it still doesn’t go hard at certain points. Opener “There’s No Future in Optimism” sounds like New Order-gone-glam, “Chinese Fire Horse” is an amped-up, barbed-wire reworking of Cameo-style future-funk and there’s a curled-lip swagger to cascading electro-rock anthem “R U Happy Now.” These are songs that erupt with some of Garbage’s brightest hooks yet, an airy pop euphoria elevating the synth grooves of “Sisyphus” and “Radical”’s dreamy soundscapes. Coming together as Manson recovered from a second hip operation, with her three bandmates writing music and sending her demos, it’s a record that finds the singer in defiantly uplifting form and a reminder of what a strange and brilliant band Garbage is. They’re a group who can put together a record by working separately but still evoke the communal jubilance of a band in a room, who can craft seething anthems but summon rallying encouragement. Garbage always sound like they’re already leaning into their next move. *Let All That We Imagine Be The Light* is the vital sound of the four-piece putting their best foot forward.

The Irish musician wrote her self-released debut album, 2019’s dreamy, reverb-drenched *All My People*, while living in Dublin and pining for her hometown of Connemara on Ireland’s Atlantic coast. Writing its follow-up, Maria Somerville returned to the rural landscapes of her youth, drawing inspiration from its wild terrain, its weather patterns and various bodies of water, and the Irish folk traditions still cherished by the locals. Between a pair of artist residencies on the nearby island of Inis Oírr, long conversations with her fisherman father, and home recording sessions with a small crew of new collaborators (Henry Earnest, Finn Carraher McDonald, Roisin Berkeley) emerged the ethereal songs of *Luster*, Somerville’s sophomore album and her 4AD debut. Wistful dream-pop numbers like “Garden” and “Projections” channel the woozy romance of Grouper, Mazzy Star, or Cocteau Twins, while evoking Somerville’s misty, windswept surroundings.

Neton Vega’s rise in música mexicana has been an auspicious one. The Baja California singer effectively stormed the genre in 2024, both via singles and his notable placements on two of the year’s biggest albums—Peso Pluma’s *ÉXODO* and Tito Double P’s *INCÓMODO*. Benefitting from those wins, his full-length debut, *Mi Vida Mi Muerte*, aims to plant his proverbial flag as a soloist while bringing prior collaborators and newer ones along for the proverbial ride. Indeed, those aforementioned acts come through with strong appearances on salacious corridos in the tumbado tradition, the former on “Morena” and the latter on “Chiquita.” The stacked guest list also includes Gabito Ballesteros, Óscar Maydon, and Chino Pacas, not to mention two features from Luis R Conriquez. Those names suggest a certain genre purity, something Vega excels at on solo moments such as “Chrome Corazón” and “M&M.” Still, he branches out into hip-hop, reggaetón, and pop stylings as well via “Me Ha Costado,” “Loco,” and the title track.

At the core of every PUP record is the tension between Stefan Babcock’s brutally self-analytical lyrics and the rapturous communal response that their music elicits. And that contrasting quality has become all the more pronounced as the manic Toronto punks have gradually eased off the gas pedal. After expanding their palette with brass sections and electronics on 2022’s high-concept corporate satire *The Unraveling of Puptheband*, they reemerge on *Who Will Look After the Dogs?* with a sharpened musical and lyrical focus, settling comfortably into a post-emo power-pop style that makes Babcock’s bitterest sentiments sound celebratory. Babcock has a knack for framing universal anxieties—be it breakups or the fear of death—in intimate yet irreverent details: The Weezer-esque chugger “Olive Garden” sees him trying to salvage a broken relationship by revisiting the Italian restaurant chain that’s hosted countless high schoolers’ first dates, while the breezy ’90s alt-pop jangle of “Hallways” reveals the morbid inspiration behind the album’s title, when Babcock talks himself off the ledge by declaring, “I can’t die yet/’Cause who will look after the dog?” (And while cataloging his joyless days and sleepless nights, he manages to slip in winking quotes of Disturbed’s “Down with the Sickness” and Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep.”) But if the entire PUP discography feels like an extended therapy session, then the irresistibly anthemic “Best Revenge” feels like a breakthrough, where the song\'s radiant guitars are matched by an equally sunny outlook: “The best revenge is living well,” Babcock sings, and even if there are days when he can’t fully live up to that promise, he’ll at least have a club full of fans shouting out the song’s ecstatic chorus to keep him on the right path.

Listening to *MAD!*—the 28th studio album by Sparks, the fraternal duo of Ron and Russell Mael—it can be difficult to remember that they have been a band for more than half a century, with both brothers now on the doorstep of 80. Pairing aggressive programming and vivid electronic textures with sharp rock-band backing, these 12 songs are edgy, canny, and electrifying, eternal trademarks of Sparks’ music that have only sharpened with time. And that has been intentional, confirms Russell. “When you’ve had 28 albums, you want to impress yourself, that you can still do things that are modern-sounding, not like a band with a 28-album history,” he tells Apple Music. “We work hard at trying to do things that are provocative, lyrically and sonically.” The Maels talk about the process behind and inspiration for each track. **“Do Things My Own Way”** Russell Mael: “‘Do Things My Own Way’ is probably the mantra that Sparks has pursued for our entire career, from day one, when Todd Rundgren was the only person to acknowledge Sparks’ capabilities. We were turned down by a million labels, but he said you should always do things your own way. He said that, even on our very first album, we’d created our own universe, and we should continue on that way.” Ron Mael: “This is really the first song written for the album. We don’t carry over older, unused material onto a new album, so we start from scratch. After we recorded all these songs, it seemed fitting that it be in first place, because it is an overall statement of the album and Sparks.” **“JanSport Backpack”** Ron Mael: “We realize the practical uses of a JanSport, but we were in Tokyo and saw quite a few fashionable young ladies who were wearing JanSport backpacks. That isn’t a luxury brand, but they were wearing it as a style statement. That image stuck with us, and we tried to work backward to see how we could use it in a song. So, there’s a girl who’s breaking up with a guy, and the image he has is her walking away with a JanSport backpack. We have much confidence that, on Apple Music, you won’t find another song about JanSport backpacks.” **“Hit Me, Baby”** Russell Mael: “This is someone hoping it’s a nightmare, but the reality is that they are living this nightmare that we all are. We’re in Paris now, so it’s refreshing to not have “that man” in your face all the time, like when you’re in the States. The song obliquely references the hopelessness of the situation all around, but we didn’t want to be so blatant as to spell it out exactly. It can be about anyone else’s own situation, where they’re having a bad time that they hope goes away.” Ron Mael: “It was written in a more general sense before the election, but it became obvious that, even subconsciously, it had a more specific meaning. We like details in songs, but it’s important for us to have lyrics that don’t only reflect a particular subject, that they have a broader subtext. But it still took on a more specific meaning after the election.” **“Running Up a Tab at the Hotel for the Fab”** Russell Mael: “It’s a guy who is trying to impress his partner by taking her to this fine hotel and running a tab in hopes of swaying her. But the guy doesn’t have the means to pay for the extravagant tastes, so he gets thrown into prison at Rikers Island. But he says it’s all worth it, because he’s hoping she’ll come to visit him there.” Ron Mael: “In the distant past, we only wrote a song, then brought it in to record. We still work that way, but we also have the luxury, since Russell has a studio at his place, of just going into the studio and starting without any kind of preconception. We get a more varied approach, and this is one song that was done from the studio standpoint, then working backwards to figure out a melody and lyrics.” **“My Devotion”** Russell Mael: “Some people have tried to look deeper into it and say, ‘Well, surely it can’t just be a really nice love song.’ But, no, it’s just a really nice love song. We hope that, lyrically, it’s charming, with the guy’s devotion being so strong that he’s written her name on his shoe and is even thinking of getting a tattoo. It’s one of my favorite lines on the album.” **“Don’t Dog It”** Ron Mael: “With the line ‘Shake it thusly and you’ll see the light,’ we like having words from two different worlds. ‘Shake it’ is a cliché in a million songs, but ‘thusly’ is such a formal word. They are in conflict as far as the tone, but it’s a formal way to suggest something carnal. We like butting up together, so to speak, words. It’s a Shakespeare thing applied to hip-hop expression. We’re also encouraging movement as a way to fight. The person is seeking help, and the advice that they’re given isn’t something deep and intellectual. It’s ‘shake it thusly.’” **“In Daylight”** Ron Mael: “For most of us, darkness is more advantageous to our opportunities for romantic advancement, let’s say. In so many of our songs, the instrumentation and singing are very direct, even if it’s musically complex. We often attempt to make songs aggressive, but this one was a little more diffuse. There’s an atmosphere here, and it feels blurred, which is the feeling of being between daylight and darkness.” **“I-405 Rules”** Russell Mael: “There’s some sincerity to the image of the I-405 having a beauty in its own way, especially if you look at it at night, when thousands of cars are bumper to bumper, and you see the red taillights. It’s a sea of red, especially if you’re above the freeway, say, at the Getty Center. Lots of other major cities in the world have this beautiful river—the Seine, the Thames, the Sumida. But we don’t have that, except when, once a year, it rains in LA, when it even starts to look like a river. The I-405 is our contribution to the great rivers of the world. This song is also so sonically in your face that it’s overly dramatic for the subject matter, and we like that it goes counter to what we’re singing about.” **“A Long Red Light”** Russell Mael: “We like this song a lot, because it’s not a typical song structure. It’s a piece that evolves over time with a simple subject—waiting for a red light to hopefully turn green someday. Over time, it shifts musically, and, toward the end of it, you can sense the frustration that the light is still red. It turns into this big chorale, with a lot of voices and orchestral drums coming in. The situation becomes really urgent, and we like that in a song that deals with a small situation, a red light that everyone’s been to. That was challenging for us in a positive way.” **“Drowned in a Sea of Tears”** Russell Mael: “It is a devastating relationship breakup song. There’s been pop songs throughout history that have had the theme of drowning. We wanted to find another way of doing that. This one is really melodic, and, in contrast to ‘A Long Red Light,’ it’s a verse and a chorus kicking in a big way.” **“A Little Bit of Light Banter”** Ron Mael: “We see it as this couple that feels that they’re different from other couples that do need all these in-depth discussions. This couple is happy to do something that’s the opposite of that, and they feel a closeness because they just share this love of light banter. They don’t care what the neighbors think, and hopefully it comes across as charming, for a couple that feels they’re outside of the world of heavy-duty discussions. The advice that we’re given is that we’re supposed to read and discuss Kafka at night, but it’s not always wise advice.” **“Lord Have Mercy”** Russell Mael: “It is another take on a relationship. While this woman is asleep, her partner hears her singing this melody, and it’s so beautiful for him to hear. He’s heard melodies from buskers on the street that were OK. He’s heard melodies from various times and periods. But this melody he’s overhearing from this woman in her sleep becomes something so striking and profound for him.” Ron Mael: “He’s not necessarily a believer, but the beauty of her singing while she’s half-asleep has captivated him so much. He hears what she’s singing not in a lyrical sense about religion and being converted, but he just finds beauty in what she’s singing and hopes it continues forever.”

Tunde Adebimpe’s solo debut faced a long, hard road to fruition. In the wake of TV on the Radio going on hiatus in 2019, Adebimpe’s efforts were stalled by the pandemic, label disinterest, and, most tragically, the death of his sister Jumoke. By happenstance, *Thee Black Boltz* arrives in the midst of TV on the Radio’s reunion campaign, and if lead single “Magnetic” had been released under the TVOTR banner, no one would bat an eye: The song boasts a minimalist electro-punk sound that harkens back to the band’s early-2000s days in the Brooklyn DIY scene, and a buzzing energy that will satisfy anyone who regularly dials up the band’s raging performance of “Wolf Like Me” on Letterman when they need an instant adrenaline boost. But *Thee Black Boltz* is, naturally, a much more personal statement than TVOTR’s definitive life-during-wartime addresses. It’s distinguished not just by its open displays of grief (see: “ILY,” aka “I Love You,” a tender acoustic elegy for Jumoke), but in its defiant embrace of joy: “Somebody New” channels the pure discotheque ecstasy of mid-’80s New Order, while the stuttering synth-pop of “The Most” wraps its heartwarming sentiments in twinkling psychedelic flourishes and a mid-song flip of Wayne Smith’s dancehall classic “Under Me Sleng Teng.”

“I found a crouton underneath a futon,” singer Sebastian Murphy intones over a steady bass throb punctuated by flute accents on “Uno II,” one of the many clever and catchy tunes on the quasi-self-titled *viagr aboys*. “Mama said I couldn’t eat it ’cause all my teeth are gone.” Such is the delightfully absurdist world of Viagra Boys, a Swedish quasi-punk group with an American vocalist and an undying hunger for shrimp and shrimp-related products. The band’s fourth album doubles down on the self-deprecating, society-skewering antics and infectious grooves of 2022’s *Cave World* with gleeful abandon. Powered by slashing guitars and a droning chorus, “Man Made of Meat” offers historical perspective for modern complainers: “I don’t wanna pay for anything/Clothes and food and drugs for free/If it was 1970, I’d have a job at a factory.” Jet-propelled bass boogie “The Bog Body” doubles as a commentary on superficiality that plays out like an inversion of the Demi Moore body-horror flick *The Substance*, complete with a zombielike swamp woman. “Pyramid of Health” simultaneously apes and lampoons Marcy Playground’s grunge-esque ’90s hit “Sex and Candy” before veering into carnival music and electronic noise. Resurrecting a successful template from previous albums, Murphy cuts loose with a hilarious, possibly stream-of-consciousness rant over skronky free jazz on “Best in Show Pt. IV.” With breathy backing vocals and a chiming minor-key organ melody, “Medicine for Horses” is more plaintive, reflective, and—maybe—straight-faced. The same could be said of Murphy’s mournful, wavering vocal on closer “River King,” but who knows? Where Viagra Boys are concerned, it’s anyone’s guess.

On their sixth studio album, mystical Norwegian folk troupe Wardruna conjure a song cycle about the she-bear, or Birna. “Bears are an absolutely fascinating species, and it’s easy to understand why they have become such an important part of folklore in certain types of culture—in fairy tales, in lullabies, and in star signs,” Wardruna’s songwriter, co-vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Einar Selvik tells Apple Music. “Why I chose the she-bear rather than the male bear is the fact that their annual rhythm mirrors completely the rhythm of Mother Earth in a way—the cyclic turns of life, death, and regeneration. That’s the story I wanted to tell on this record.” Since 2003, Selvik and his musical partner and co-vocalist Lindy-Fay Hella—along with an ever-expanding cast of backing musicians—have used Old Norse language and ancient traditional instruments to channel the majesty of the natural world. “Giving voice to the wild, I think, is important,” Selvik says. “I think a lot of us feel a deeper and deeper void between us and our surroundings. To be living so removed from nature, from the cycles of the Earth, is not healthy. But our society doesn’t really allow us to follow the rhythm of the seasons. We tend to have one tempo year-round; we eat everything year-round, neglecting the fact that we are cyclic beings. That’s one of the things bears can teach us. And not only bears, but nature: They help us remember that we’re part of something.” Below, Selvik discusses each song on *Birna*. **“Hertan”** “Hertan is the proto-Scandinavian word for ‘heart,’ and that is where we start this journey—with the pulse that beats in everything and that governs all of these movements within ourselves, and also in nature in various forms and beings. That’s, of course, the physical heart, but then you also have the metaphorical heart, the ship of emotion. That is what counsels our decisions and choices here in life and our emotions. It takes us through one of these cycles of death and rebirth. In enduring that process, we understand it and see it clearly, these movements and patterns and our place in them.” **“Birna”** “The word means ‘she-bear.’ It is a track that represents a dialogue between man and she-bear. It’s written in a playful way, like many of the old bear songs from traditions where there are a lot of bears in their culture. It addresses the somewhat problematic relationship we have had with bears throughout time. It acknowledges that our path together has been a tangled one. And then, the she-bear asks to lend its hide, which is something that has been used ceremonially or in many traditions to borrow the bear’s strength, to borrow its courage or whatever skill. It is said that bears have the strength of 12 men and the wits of 10, and that is often the skills we wanted to learn from them.” **“Ljos til Jord”** “Here, we start at the summer solstice, and we follow the bear’s movement towards the den. We see the birds migrate, we see the salmon swim upstream in the river to spawn where they were born and then die. All of these movements we see in nature. It is written in the lyrics that it’s almost like every year we’re invited to this wonderful, luscious feast, but at some point, the hostess of the party leaves, and we’re left to gather what we can to survive until she returns in spring.” **“Dvaledraumar”** “It means ‘Dormant Dreams,’ and this, of course, is the hibernation. The bear doesn’t really hibernate, per definition—it goes into a semi-hibernating state where it lowers its heart rate to between eight and 10 beats per minute. I chose nine beats per minute for conceptual reasons, and that is the pulse that leads you through this 15-minute dreamscape. The sounds you hear—they’re almost whalelike—they come from a lake that freezes in a very specific way in wintertime. We were lucky to have Jonna Jinton, the Swedish artist who has been recording these singing ice lakes for several years now, collaborating on this song with both the field recordings and some vocals toward the end.” **“Jord til Ljos”** “This was made as one track with ‘Dvaledraumar,’ and the title means ‘Earth to Light’ or ‘Womb to Light.’ It follows the same pulse as ‘Dvaledraumar,’ with the same instrumentation in a way, but it subtly transforms as the den is becoming smaller and smaller, and the birds are singing. It’s time to wake up and enter spring, to enter the life cycle of the year.” **“Himinndotter”** “This is the emergence of spring, but also coming into light, or enlightenment. You have journeyed together with this bear through this cycle. It’s a song very much about seeing these movements and cyclic patterns that we are a part of and realizing the repercussions of messing with these systems. It’s a lot about seeking connection, but also acknowledging that at this point, the shepherd of the forest—in this case, the bear—is no longer welcome in its homelands. The choir you hear is an all-female choir from Oslo, the Koret Artemis. They work a lot with traditional music from all over the world. I wanted it to feel like we’re in unison, that we are many people who think and feel the importance of this.” **“Hibjørnen”** “It means ‘The Den Bear,’ or ‘The Hibernator.’ It’s written as a lullaby because lullabies are very much connected to bears. Wherever there are bears, you have a lot of lullabies about bears because of their sleep. And the way they mother their cubs is so powerful. It’s the reason why we call some mothers ‘mother bear’ or ‘mama bear.’ Bears are badass moms. They give it all. So, it’s a lullaby from the bear’s perspective within the den.” **“Skuggehesten”** “It means ‘Shadow Horse,’ and we’re in the human realm again, not the bear realm. It’s basically a long set of metaphors and descriptions of when you’re in a dark place or when darkness rides you. It’s pretty aggressive in a way. At the same time, it’s emotional. It’s the type of song I really recommend you have a look at the lyrics. It, of course, is best if you know the original language because it’s not as poetic in the translation, but we always include English translations in our booklets.” **“Tretale”** “It means ‘The Voice of Trees.’ It’s basically a song about how your surroundings speak to you—or through you, potentially—if you listen. It’s the type of voice that whispers silently in your ear. You can’t necessarily hear it externally, but it speaks through you from within. A lot of the sounds you hear in the song, it’s me out in the forest shaking big and small trees, scraping on the bark of many different trees and twigs and all sorts of things—and the wind in many different types of leaves. So, the soundscape is very much trees. Trees and instruments, of course.” **“Lyfjaberg”** “It means ‘The Healing Mountain,’ and this song came out a few years ago. It was made after the last album was finished, but as a result of us having to postpone the record \[due to the COVID-19 pandemic\], that is why we released the song \[in 2020\]. We really wanted to release music, and a lot of people were waiting. We know Lyfjaberg from the old myths and the old Eddic poetry as a mythical place where, if you were able to climb this mountain, you would be healed of all your illnesses. So, the song contains incantations and ancient healing spells. And climbing a mountain is a very good metaphor also for fighting difficult things in your life. The core of it is that anything of true value comes at a true cost. You won’t reach the top of the mountain without walking uphill.”

William Tyler spent the first 15 years of his solo career bridging the fingerpicky intricacy of post-folk guitarists like John Fahey with the mellow, expansive qualities of ambient and New Age. *Time Indefinite* is both none of that and more. Built on loops made using an old cassette deck rescued from his late grandfather’s office in Jackson, Mississippi, the music here retains all the vernacular Americanness that made Tyler’s early albums feel approachable, but foregrounds texture instead of technique: the crumbling hymn of “Star of Hope,” the pastoral washes of “The Hardest Land to Harvest,” the creaking, almost horror-movie suspense of “Cabin Six” and “A Dream, a Flood.” The sum is music that has more in common with the sound manipulations of Jim O’Rourke or the late-’60s work of a composer like Gavin Bryars, whose stately, droning pieces captured the comfort of folk music within the frame of the avant-garde. He shifted gears—and he pulled it off.