Braids, Native Speaker (on the Kanine label)

This is a Canadian band, and there’s that winsome air of calling out into the wilderness about Native Speaker. (I’m stretching a geographical point here, since the band appears to be cityfolk from Montreal.) Everything sounds like a soft rain. But it’s a compelling mood, not one that doesn’t let you in to the singer’s fretting. Raphaelle Standell-Preston both confronts and counters the soundscape around her, standing on her own little mountain peak. There’s a neo-classical edge in the echoey repetition, but again this is prepared (if unfettered) pop, not some jaunt into the far reaches.