Last year's flurry aside, winter snow isn't something that we really have to deal with much in this country. This leaves the season with two defining primary characteristics: cold, and dark. For cold, there are hats, and artful fingerless gloves, and scarves. For the dark, though, different remedies are needed. Lights, obviously. Thanks for that, reader(s). But also: music.

I haven't discovered many recent albums that better capture the muted beauty of autumn-into-winter than Fleet Foxes' eponymous debut. Something in its hushed solemnity seems to convey interior-ness: through the hymn-like choral singing, the chiming instrumentation, and the rural overtones of the lyrics. What appeals most to me, though, is the texture: ever since REM's Out of Time I've been drawn to close harmonies, and they're everywhere here. There's the sense of some unknown menace lurking just out of shot in some of those lyrics, and it's as if the band believe that the sheer force of melody can somehow keep at bay the darkness gathering outside.