I remember the first time I ever heard White Winter Hymnal. Someone had posted the creeping, stop motion video online, and I was spellbound. I gobbled up everything of Fleet Foxes I could–the record, radio performances, their Judee Still cover on Black Cab Sessions, everything. When I returned to college that fall, I spread White Winter Hymnal like gospel (along with Bon Iver, who broke through that same summer). Their mix of Beach Boy harmonies and mountain folk filtered through Seattle sensibilities was at once fresh and familiar. Just how familiar was revealed to me when my roommate responded to the album with “that was Fleet Foxes? I thought you were listening to James Taylor.”

But focusing on the familiarity of it and calling them the folk Beach Boys misses the care these gentlemen treat their craft with. Every guitar string that’s fingerpicked, every tom that’s gently pounded, every harmony sung sounds as if it were labored over and chiseled until it was as close to perfect as possible, and it pays off. I have listened to this record hundreds of times, and not one of them was wasted. Every time Robin Pecknold’s voice nearly cracks in He Doesn’t Know Why when he sings, “there’s nothing I can do,” I felt the same joy in accepting powerlessness he felt. I felt the cold of the forest when he sings Blue Ridge Mountains. I felt every pound of the drum in the coda of Your Protector. The passion in their hearts comes through each song undiluted and becomes the listeners’ passion. And what else can you ask music to do?