Artist Sufjan Stevens

Denny Renshaw

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Sufjan Stevens

Even to ears that grow cranky as more and more uninspired artists march to the base of the "indie-folk" pile, Sufjan Stevens' marriage of spare acoustics, whimsical instrumentation, and ribcage-tugging hooks helps to put such genre labels (and the exhaustion they reflect) in the background where they belong. Perhaps it takes a certain madness to tour with a "butterfly brigade" clad in adorable butterfly wings as Stevens once did, or to attempt a series of 50 concept albums on the states. (So far he's only finished Michigan and Illinois.) But all that comes with a mighty knack for composition that's served him well since his first solo album, A Sun Came, dropped in 2000.

Updated 09/29/2009