Iron and Wine - "Naked As We Came". The second tracked from Iron & Wine's freshly leaked album, Our Endless Numbered Days, destined to be released this spring on Sub Pop. Gone is the hiss of Sam Beam's home-recorded debut, and while it does come at the cost of a little fuzzy intimacy, the clearer fingerpicking - as well as Sam's light (!), free voice, - means that for the first time Iron & Wine doesn't sound like a wet blanket. This is twinkling, fleet-footed folk music, something that I can finally imagine arising out of Beam's Florida home.

Mùm - "Weeping Rock, Rock". Well isn't this interesting. Also from an upcoming album (in this case, Múm's Summer Make Good), this is a noisier, more muscular track than anything I remember off Finally We Are No One. The Icelandic lapfolk group shows a surprising musical depth, here, with the distant blare of horns, the snow-giant crash of drums, and a ghostly-sung melody which feels like something out of Jeunet's Paris-gone-weird City of Lost Children. This is real song, albeity a peculiar one, but isn't nearly so expansive and flat as the band's previous work.