Atwood Journal is worked up to share our Editor’s Picks column, written and curated by Editor-in-Chief Mitch Mosk. Each week, Mitch will share a group of songs, albums, and artists who’ve caught his ears, eyes, and coronary heart. There’s a lot unbelievable music on the market simply ready to be heard, and all it takes from us is an open thoughts and a willingness to hear. By our Editor’s Picks, we hope to shine a light-weight on our personal music discoveries and showcase a various array of recent and up to date releases.
This week’s Editor’s Picks options Bon Iver, Japanese Breakfast, Samia, Michael Marcagi, spill tab, and Djo!
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Bon Iver’s music has at all times had soul, however by no means fairly like this. With SABLE, fABLE, Justin Vernon and firm channel love, therapeutic, and human connection right into a radiant, revelatory, and radical reinvention. Steeped in heat and religious renewal, the band’s fifth studio album is a soulful, hopeful, and heartfelt odyssey – a luminous tapestry of intentionality, candy sound, uncooked intimacy, and fearless, boundary-pushing sonic exploration. Achingly tender and breathtakingly lovely inside and outside, SABLE, fABLE marks a definite, dramatic rebirth for the Bon Iver challenge, now in its 19th yr. Without delay intimate and expansive, it displays on the place we’ve been and imagines the place we would go, bathed in golden gentle.
I can see the place you’re coming from
I obtained time, I may give you some
I simply adore it while you name me “Child”
Although it’s taking place much less these days
I can match
I can match all of it
Nothing’s actually unsuitable so
Any more
The songs of SABLE, fABLE really feel much less like compositions and extra like choices — vivid expressions of presence, compassion, id, and catharsis that radiate with light grace and emotional immediacy. A mantra of aware existence wrapped in glowing harmonies, “all the things is peaceable love” shimmers with quiet pleasure and soft-spoken gratitude, whereas “there’s a rhythmn” pulses with kinetic vitality and an undercurrent of awe, balancing intimacy and abstraction in traditional Bon Iver style. “day one,” a collaboration with Dijon and Flock of Dimes, swells with surprise and renewal, its swirling textures and expansive melodies evoking the very feeling of a contemporary begin.
Don’t let it bother your thoughts
Simply take my love in your time
No must hurry
Give me your fear
We are able to simply hold it right here for now
But when there’s one music that feels just like the album’s emotional core, it’s “from” – a quiet masterclass in empathy that leans into love not as spectacle, however as regular presence. A panoramic collaboration between Vernon, mk.gee, Jacob Collier, Tobias Jesso Jr., and others, “from” elevates Bon Iver’s sound into new emotional terrain as Vernon delivers a soul-stirring meditation on perspective, gratitude, and self-worth formed by means of love. “I can see the place you’re coming from / I obtained time, I may give you some,” he sings over mk.gee’s distinctive guitar tones, his uncooked voice a beacon of unfiltered honesty and care. There’s no rush, no strain – simply house, softness, and belief. “Don’t let it bother your thoughts / Simply take my love in your time,” he croons, backed by a refrain of spellbinding harmonies, providing consolation with out situation. mk.gee’s signature textures mix seamlessly into Bon Iver’s sonic world, including rhythmic nuance and atmospheric depth to a observe that appears like a wealthy, heat exhale. “from” doesn’t simply communicate to like — it embodies it, in all its endurance, presence, and quiet grace.
After I known as you from the lodge
You stated you have been doing nicely
However I may inform
Simply final Might there was confetti within the automobile
And now, it appears we’re far aside
However I’m prepared
Don’t you are feeling me?
Don’t you are feeling compelled?
Oh, you now can simply be your self
Any more
On this musical second of stillness and give up, Bon Iver remind us that love – actual, grounding, transformative love – could be each compass and treatment. “from” could also be one observe amongst many, but it surely captures the soul of SABLE, fABLE in its purest type: Affected person, beneficiant, and deeply human. Because the album weaves by means of meditations on presence, perspective, and emotional renewal, this music stands out as a quiet, shimmering reminder of how far just a little softness can go. It’s the sort of music that etches itself into your coronary heart and stays there, not simply as a favourite from the album, however as one in every of Bon Iver’s most timeless and tender choices. For me, it already appears like perpetually.
Don’t let it bother your thoughts
Simply take my love in your time
I’m prepared, run from worry
I’m from someplace removed from right here
So inform me when the coast is evident
Wanna kiss you ear from ear
Can I take one other yr?
Should I be so rattling extreme?
From the valley to the pier
I’m beset with what we may change into
Inform me you prepared
I can see the place you’re coming from
I’m holding regular
We are able to simply hold it right here for now
“Image Window”
by Japanese Breakfast
Tright here’s a quiet, comforting devastation to Japanese Breakfast’s dreamy “Image Window,” a music that feels prefer it’s consistently exhaling grief and gathering it again in once more. It’s light, celestial, and achingly current – an ambient meditation on reminiscence and loss, wrapped in a softly seductive haze of synths and spectral harmonies. The observe finds singer/songwriter Michelle Zauner reckoning along with her personal interior demons as she lives her life along with somebody much less weighed down by those self same worries and fears; in distinction to her accomplice’s lightness, she carries the burden of what’s been misplaced – and that dichotomy brings its personal emotional terrain to navigate.
My child loves a port city
And a shuffle
Solely cries on Ferris wheels
This child’s on the verge of
If she misplaced him, would most definitely be dedicated
Are you not afraid of each waking minute
That your life may cross you by?
But it’s the refrain that lands with breathtaking weight:
“However all of my ghosts are actual… All of my ghosts are my residence.”
In a single line, Zauner captures the haunting familiarity of ache – the best way sorrow can settle into us, not as one thing to conquer, however one thing to reside with. It’s not only a lyric; it’s a worldview; one which doesn’t flinch from the presence of grief, however folds it into the self. Heard casually, “Image Window” may float by as merely upbeat, melodic, and heat – however linger a second, and the ache units in. That visceral repetition of “my ghosts” turns into each confession and acceptance: a recognition that the previous, irrespective of how heavy, is a part of who we’re.
Coronary heart breaking like a punch card
Retains his mouth shut
Retains his thoughts mounted and nicely hidden
You dream sufficient for 2, expensive
Image window
Looking at someplace else
“Since I used to be younger, I’ve struggled with intrusive ideas of family members dying in horrible methods,” Zauner shared earlier this month. “My thoughts jumps to the worst-case situation, a reflex solely intensified by actual experiences with loss. Loving somebody who doesn’t share that very same sense of fear could be each a reduction and a problem.”
“Image Window” doesn’t seek for decision – it merely lets us sit inside the sensation. It’s a music about trying outward by means of glass whereas nonetheless being tethered to all the things that lives inside. And in that pressure, Japanese Breakfast gives one in every of their most quietly profound statements to this point – a glowing centerpiece on her newest album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& unhappy girls), the place grief, reminiscence, and love coalesce in mushy, beautiful concord.
Do you not conceive of my demise at each minute
Whereas your life simply passes you by?
However all of my ghosts are actual
All of my ghosts are actual
All of my ghosts are my residence
All of my ghosts are actual
All of my ghosts are actual
All of my ghosts are my residence
“Gap in a Body”
by Samia
“A little demise goes a great distance.” Samia delivers the road with such disarming straightforwardness, you won’t suppose too deeply about it. However you do – she makes certain of that, her voice deliberately lingering on each phrase simply lengthy sufficient for its full weight to decide on the soul. On “Gap in a Body,” one of the vital stirring and surreal songs off her upcoming sophomore album Cold, this lyric acts as each emotional thesis and existential mantra – a recognition of how even the smallest losses, slips, or ego deaths can ripple by means of our lives with outsized pressure.
Nothing goes the way it was gonna
You miss the boat, you gotta swim
However I don’t must let you know that
Tulsa, Oklahoma, gap in a body
Sid was vicious
And the drywall cracked
Like an autograph
That endlessly appreciates
A little bit demise goes a great distance
What does it imply, to expertise “just a little demise”? In French, la petite mort is commonly a euphemism (go look it up), however in Samia’s world, the phrase carries a distinct form of weight. It evokes the numerous tiny disappearances we endure – of selves, of illusions, of certainties. The demise of a model of you that now not matches. The quiet ending of one thing unstated. A realization that modifications the course with out asserting itself.
“‘Gap in a Body’ is a couple of fascination with disappearing and the ability of absence,” Samia shared. There’s consolation in vacancy right here—not a void, however a sort of clearing. An invite to step out of focus, to un-be for a second. She’s not lamenting these vanishings a lot as finding out them, perhaps even discovering refuge inside them. That line – repeated like some sacred textual content by the top – transforms from lament to liberation.
There I’m the place I shouldn’t be
Clearly, I purchased the ticket
and took the experience
Pissing within the wind and
Making an attempt to avoid your
line of imaginative and prescient from stage proper
Like {a photograph}
Of the final time I got here
A little bit demise goes a great distance
The music itself drifts like a reminiscence, all mushy corners and elliptical phrasing. From Tulsa, Oklahoma to cracked drywall and stage proper, Samia builds a collage of photographs that glint and fade like overexposed movie. There’s no narrative, simply snapshots: Fractured, lovely, and half-submerged. Just like the “gap in a body” she references, we’re left to sit down with what’s lacking.
In the long run, “Gap in a Body” doesn’t give solutions – it leans into absence. And in doing so, Samia captures one thing that feels oddly hopeful: That there’s energy in slipping away, peace in being momentarily undefined. A little bit demise goes a great distance – and perhaps that’s the purpose.
It’s raining, I’m straying from the border
You realize what they are saying
concerning the child and the coroner
Perhaps I used to be born for this
Dying to myself
When you maintain the onus
Will you maintain the onus?
A little bit demise goes a protracted
A little bit demise goes a protracted
A little bit demise goes a protracted
A little bit demise goes a great distance
“Midwest Child”
by Michael Marcagi
“Midwest Child” is an anthem, a homecoming, a reckoning — however greater than something, it’s a reclamation. Michael Marcagi’s first single of the yr and the title observe off his model new EP (out at the moment by way of Warner Data), “Midwest Child” is the sort of music that wears its coronary heart — and its hometown — on its sleeve. It’s not only for these raised amongst cornfields, rust-belt cities, or huge sky plains; it’s for anybody who’s carried a chunk of their previous into the current. Anybody who’s ever longed for less complicated instances, for entrance yards and childhood laughter, for one thing that felt like security — even when it by no means actually was.
I wanna get misplaced within the ocean
The place nobody is aware of my title
And all of my confusion
Can wash out in a wave
I wanna return to my entrance yard
Simply laughing like a baby
The solar over my heat pores and skin
Haven’t felt that for some time, for some time
“It’s concerning the place I used to be born, raised, and nonetheless name residence,” the Cincinnati, Ohio native explains. “It’s about beginning this loopy new chapter of my life whereas navigating and sustaining the relationships I’ve with family and friends in my hometown. I’m very pleased with the place I’m from, and I hope to hold that with me perpetually.”
There’s a rawness to “Midwest Child” — emotionally and sonically. Over driving guitar strums and a gradual beat, Marcagi blends nostalgia with vulnerability, singing of sleepless nights, buried secrets and techniques, and the ache of not being believed. “I’m simply one other damaged, messed-up Midwest child,” he repeats within the observe’s charged chorus, turning a second of self-doubt into an immediately memorable rallying cry. The lyric hits like a confession, but it surely additionally appears like solidarity — an acknowledgment that brokenness and pleasure can coexist. That residence can each wound you and be your anchor.
And all my fears
I can’t let go
And I’ve been holding on
For manner too lengthy
And also you don’t consider me
You by no means did
I’m simply one other damaged
tousled midwest child
“I wanna return to my entrance yard, simply laughing like a baby,” he sings, reaching for one thing simply out of attain. And isn’t that the center of it? The craving to be seen. To return. To maneuver ahead with out letting go of the place you got here from.
“Midwest Child” is a music of place, sure — but in addition of personhood. It’s a reminder that id is messy and delightful and stuffed with ghosts we study to reside with. Marcagi doesn’t fake to have all of it discovered. He simply sings the reality as he is aware of it — and in doing so, he provides the remainder of us one thing to carry on to, too.
And all of the nights that I couldn’t sleep
The secrets and techniques that I couldn’t hold
All of it comes speeding again to me
I can’t escape even in my goals
Oh and all of the nights that I couldn’t sleep
The secrets and techniques that I couldn’t hold
All of it comes speeding again to me,
all of it comes speeding again
And all my fears
I can’t let go
And I’ve been holding on
For manner too lengthy
And also you don’t consider me
You by no means did
I’m simply one other damaged tousled midwest child
Achingly intimate, unapologetically different, and soaked in seductive emotional static, “Angie” is a hypnotic, psychedelic fever dream. The title observe off spill tab’s long-awaited debut album doesn’t ask for our consideration; it pulls us below, wrapping our ears – and by extension, our souls – in waves of overdriven guitar, hazy synth, ethereal falsetto, and feverish, unfiltered emotion. It’s uncooked and churning, delicate and damaging — a mushy, shiver-inducing scream into the void, with melodies that glint like hallucinations simply out of attain.
I’ve you lined up, up, up
Angie, you’re on my thoughts
(Ooh, oh-oh-ooh, ooh)
I hate you, I don’t, don’t, don’t
Angie, she’s on my thoughts
“I’ve you lined up, up, up / Angie, you’re on my thoughts,” spill tab – aka LA-based French-Korean singer, songwriter, and producer Claire Chicha – sings, her voice barely clinging to the chaos that surrounds it. There’s vulnerability right here, but in addition volatility – a push-pull of need and detachment that unravels over ghostly harmonies and fuzzed-out textures. It’s a music of obsession, frustration, and fractured id, the place longing and loathing collide in a single breath: “I hate you, I don’t, don’t, don’t…”
The music’s dreamlike depth mirrors the story of its creation. “‘Angie’ was began on the prime of 2023… I used to be in a bizarre place on the time,” spill tab shares. “I wasn’t feeling impressed… I used to be simply actually struggling to put in writing generally.” However surrounded by collaborators John Hill and Jared Solomon (aka solomonophonic), one thing shifted. “I picked up this lovely nylon within the nook and simply began tuning it to no matter manner sounded good to me, and the preliminary chords of ‘Angie’ got here out. It was known as ‘BostonNova’ till it wasn’t, and I simply knew I liked it from day one.”
That spontaneity, that intuitive spark, pulses by means of the ultimate observe. “Angie” appears like a music pulled from the unconscious – pieced collectively from intrusive ideas, flickering recollections, and unstated fears. It performs with absence as a lot as presence; it’s music that haunts greater than it resolves.
Massive instances
However this time I’ll let you know something
Make a idiot of me tonight
Beholden by need
Darling, your title (Ooh-ooh)
Performs on (Performs on)
The again mind (Oh-oh, oh-ooh)
I’ve you lined up, up, up
Angie, you’re on my thoughts
(Ooh, oh-oh-ooh, ooh)
I hate you, I don’t, don’t, don’t
Angie, she’s on my thoughts
Is it a love music? Is it an ode to intoxication? Is it a confessional – an act of unbridled catharsis? Maybe it’s easy heat-of-the-moment abstraction, or perhaps it’s actually the entire above. As a centerpiece of ANGIE, the music embodies the album’s emotional core. “I like this assortment of songs so deeply. They really feel extra trustworthy than something I’ve created in a very long time,” spill tab says of the report. “It’s actually particular to listen to all these experiences on love and loss, rejection and keenness, strolling away and holding on too tight, all coexisting collectively in a single place: A fruits of those previous few years of my life.”
And that’s what “Angie” turns into: Not only a music, however an area the place contradiction lives snug – fragile and livid, lucid and misplaced, painfully current even because it fades. “Angie” is each a weight placed on and a weight lifted — a lush, intensely immersive second of churn and appeal we’ll hold returning to, lengthy after the music’s gone.
I’ve you lined up, up, up
Angie, you’re on my thoughts
(Ooh, oh-oh-ooh, ooh)
I hate you, I don’t, don’t, don’t
Angie, she’s on my thoughts
Djo’s “Potion” is mushy magic — a mild daydream of longing, love, and quiet hope. A standout observe off The Crux, Joe Keery’s third album below his musical moniker Djo, “Potion” floats in like a breeze by means of an open window: heat, wistful, and splendidly unusual. Its straightforward, lulling rhythm feels nearly deceptively easy, however beneath the floor is a world of surprise and craving.
After I get up at 3 within the morning
Witching hour too robust
Like a witch, I do know I would like my potion
I, I, I would discover love
I’m on the lookout for it in an alphabet soup cup
I’m trying below my thumb
It’s trying like just a little rain cloud loves me
I, I, I…
Anchored by lilting acoustic guitars, delicate percussion, and Keery’s tender falsetto, “Potion” trades the frenetic, technicolor swirl of earlier singles like “Primary Being Primary” and “Delete Ya” for one thing extra intimate, extra weak, extra stripped-down – extra human. It’s Laurel Canyon by the use of dream-pop; delicate and stripped-down, but quietly revelatory. “‘Potion’ is like your favourite pair of blue denims,” Keery shares. “I’d been engaged on Travis choosing once I wrote this music, so it’s sort of like if Harry Nilsson and Lindsey Buckingham had a child.”
Lyrically, “Potion” swims in candy surrealism and sentimentality: “I’m on the lookout for it in an alphabet soup cup / I’m trying below my thumb…” There’s humor within the metaphor, however a heavy coronary heart behind it — a soul looking the on a regular basis for one thing extraordinary. For connection. For somebody who’ll keep.
The refrain, feather-light and hauntingly lovely, is the place the observe’s quiet emotional energy blooms:
I’ll attempt for all of my life
Simply to search out somebody
who leaves on the sunshine for me
Leaves on the sunshine for me
Ah-ah
There’s a tenderness in that imagery — the softest type of devotion, of being remembered and held in another person’s world. It’s a hope that doesn’t demand fireworks, only a gentle left on.
With “Potion,” Keery gives not only a music, however a second – a mild pause within the album’s arc, stuffed with sincerity, vulnerability, and heat. It’s the sort of observe you come back to when the world feels too loud; the sort of observe that doesn’t simply ask to be heard, however to be felt.
Mr Magic and the trapdoor girls
Massive stroll, no discuss
Glitz and glamour doesn’t age like wine does
I’m countin’ on love
When the e book is within the remaining chapter
Man, it’s at all times unhappy to go
Whatcha taking from the rightful lender?
I, I, I…
Since first debuting Djo in 2019, Keery has persistently confirmed himself a singular voice and a standout songwriter — and but “Potion,” with its lightness, its humanity, and its fleeting, comforting grace, nonetheless feels contemporary, enjoyable, and revelatory. In its stillness, it gives one thing uncommon: A reminder that even in life’s most unsure moments, there’s magnificence in attempting, and solace within the hope that somebody, someplace, may depart on the sunshine.
Within the sea of 2025’s songs, “Potion” is an on the spot standout — tender, timeless, straightforward to like, and inconceivable to neglect.
I’ll attempt for all of my life
Simply to search out somebody
who leavеs on the sunshine for me
Leavеs on the sunshine for me
Ah-ah
I’ll attempt for all of my life
Simply to search out somebody
who leaves on the sunshine for me
Leaves on the sunshine for me
Ah-ah
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