Sharon Van Etten - "Love More". New music from the woman who recorded my favourite song of 2009. It's a hotter song than she's sung in the past, as if she collected the flaked red logs from a fire, set them glowing around a microphone. The harmonium wheezes happily, a tambourine rings, Sharon sings harmonies with her own voice. She sings of memory, love, and sex, but the steam that fills the room isn't the stuff of parked cars, saunas, breath on cold glass: it's a hothouse, summertime and spring, green things sprouting. It has none of the loneliness of ones and twos. "Love More" is undesolate and peopled. It's fertile. [shared via a new musicians' organisation called Weathervane / buy Sharon's album]

Beach House - "Zebra". The best song on a record called Teen Dream, but it's definitely not teenaged. Victoria Legrand gives even looks. She sings her metaphors as if they're landmarks on a map: the fact of them is more important than the awe. "Zebra"'s great strength is its guitar-line, the chords that rise and dip in unexpected grace. Each change is premature, unimagined, perfect. I have not yet learned it by heart. [buy]

Kate Maki - "Bloodshot & Blistered". The snow falls slower when you've just noticed it. It seems to hang there, in successive suspended stills. Kate Maki borrows this feeling, whispers the secret into her drummer's ear. "Bloodshot & Blistered" shifts, falls, bends forward to touch your cheek; but you never see it move. The piano, drums, organ and voices are like paintings of piano, drums, organ and voices - they don't change until you turn your back. [buy / playing in Toronto tonight]

(photograph is of Ubiquitous, by Naoko Ito)