This time the selection is more folk-oriented, which feels perfect for these frosty days. And I’m especially proud of this trio of tracks – the quality is really outstanding!

VIREO – THE GREAT GOLDEN GLOOM

We’ve featured the Pittsburgh band Vireo on the blog before – in an interview and a couple of recommendations – but it’s been a while. In mid-November, they released their ten-track album the great golden gloom, and it’s absolutely worth your time. This is exactly the kind of folk I genuinely, deeply enjoy: it has a raw, earthy vibe, with a touch of Fleet Foxes’ atmosphere, but moodier, more varied, and overall warmer, soaked in the DIY spirit I love so much.

The whole record comes in at just under half an hour, and I really appreciate the wide palette of moods and instruments — the playful, fiddle-driven earworm catching minnows, the harmonium featured in the title track, or the beat-leaning, bedroom-pop textures of cloudgazers. The album radiates a wonderfully warm feeling, and I’m excited to spend the rest of 2026 with it. For me, it’s easily a contender for one of the best folk albums of the year!

RAPT – NORTH STAR

The British singer-songwriter Rapt is a regular presence in this column, and his new track North Star lands among the ones I’m especially fond of – the strangely short ones. North Star runs just over sixty seconds. Despite being so brief, it carries a timeless atmosphere and surprising strength. The production is beautifully put together, and Jacob’s voice is paired with a gently placed female vocal that suits the track perfectly.

The song captures a brief, unexpected meeting with a loved one at a busy London train station. “We were both returning from trips that reopened old wounds, finding comfort together for a quiet 9 minutes on a bench. The track as short as our moment was,” Rapt says about the track. It’s a melancholic song that, right at the very end, shifts into something filled with an oddly comforting glow.

TORIYAMA – IT’S BEEN A ROUGH YEAR, DAD (DEMO)

We’ve been following Toriyama, the Cincinnati-based project, closely, so their new EP lola didn’t escape our attention. It’s a collection of demos from 2021 to 2025 and includes previously mentioned tracks like goldstar. it’s been a rough year, dad runs just under three minutes, and every now and then, while listening, my mind conjures up images that might have nothing to do with the song itself – they just surface uninvited.

For this one, the image was a small brook hidden in the woods, not yet frozen but already steaming slightly in the cold. And that’s the whole scene. There’s no person to witness it – just the forest, fallen leaves all around, and the brook slowly running through. I don’t know what it means, but these kinds of quiet, vivid images tend to appear only when the music is truly good.