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With 'Frostbiter,' Saintseneca Swings Towards Bright, Beautiful New Places

Saintseneca's new album, <em>Pillar of Na</em>, comes out August 19.
Nick Fancher
/
Courtesy of the artist
Saintseneca's new album, Pillar of Na, comes out August 19.

For Saintseneca, fatalistic gloom blends seamlessly with a kind of playful sprightliness: Zac Little's songs often simmer in a sad swirl of death and esoterica, but his deadpan ruminations are buoyed by the sounds of exotic instruments, candy-colored pop hooks and many points in between.

On August 31, the Ohio band will return with Pillar of Na, which takes Saintseneca's sound to arty and beautiful new places. Its first single, "Frostbiter," rumbles ominously in Little's mysterious verses — "When granddad died, I got his knife / I cleaned the kitchen and I didn't know why / Such is life as smoke in a sigh / You were well on your way by the day we arrived" — before blooming into sweet, swoony choruses that only augment the mystery.

"I think of this song as a big tree trunk in the woods where people carve their messages — initials, jokes, 'I love you' hearts," Little writes via email to NPR. "It is a work of accumulation. A little space absorbing traces of its environment over time. Every mark corresponds to a different story. Some of them are mine. Some belong to others, yet feel all too familiar."


Pillar of Na comes out August 31 via Anti.

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Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)
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