Every day for the next two weeks, Song of the Day will showcase a track by an artist playing the South by Southwest music festival. For NPR Music's full coverage of SXSW — complete with full-length concerts, studio sessions, blogs, Twitter feeds, video and more — click here. And don't miss our continuous six-and-a-half-hour playlist, The Austin 100, which features much more of the best music the festival has to offer.
Seabear's love of soft folk sounds is unquestionable, but that doesn't stop the Icelandic band from infusing its music with layers of instrumentation. Sounding like a toned-down Sufjan Stevens — or an even more toned-down Arcade Fire — Seabear's quiet execution gives its music a breezy quality. It's a sonically lush whisper, sharing secrets with anyone curious enough to listen.
"Lion Face Boy" is the first single from Seabear's sophomore album, We Built a Fire, and it's a perfect display of the band's knack for constructing mountains of instrumentation on a simple idea. The track opens with understated vocals and drums, but eventually bursts into a swarm of piano, horns and guitar. Even at its loudest, though, the music never gets overly complicated. As the mix fills with backup vocals and violin, it feels like there's still room for more: It's strange there's no glockenspiel, but an accordion turns up in the last 20 seconds of the song. Assembling this much instrumentation in an orderly fashion isn't easy, but with a strong song behind it, even a pit orchestra can find itself falling into place.
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