Lower Dens

Texas-born Baltimore resident Jana Hunter was one of the first to record for Devendra Banhart’s Gnomonsong imprint, and her weirded-out, four-track fidgeting fit in nicely with his freak-folk aesthetic. Hunter’s project, Lower Dens, is much more fleshed out, with the full-band effect expanding her ghostly creaking and blaring guitar scuzz to room-filling capacity. The band’s mesmerizing second album, Nootropics, was released earlier this year. The first single, “Brains,” is a quietly unrelenting song that nicely accompanies Hunter’s barely present vocal style, while “Propagation” slinks and whispers along to a rousing, lockstep close.

Updated 07/04/2012