Pitchfork

Indie-pop has entered its soft-rock phase, and... it sounds pretty good. Dylan Mondegreen is Norwegian singer and songwriter Børge Sildnes, whose debut album, the all-analog While I Walk You Home, just came out last month on Division. Mondegreen's current single, "Girl in Grass", should give you a good sense of what he's up to, a sound somewhere between the bedsit strums of the Lucksmiths or the Field Mice and the syrupier softness of 1970s AM staples like Bread. Nor are the results far off from the sighing pop of Swedish contemporaries the Honeydrips, whose "Fall From a Height (The Field Way)" we previously put on repeat.

In the video, a neatly-attired Sildnes can be seen picking out clean, slightly jazzy figures on a sleek Telecaster. It's a sunny day, he's standing in front of a tree, and his friends are sitting behind him. If any of this exacerbates your fall allergies, well, you still might find "Girl in the Grass" an unassuming pleasure-- and we haven't even told you yet about the dripping strings, acoustic jangle, bubblegum melody, or, shit yeah, saxophone solo. "You want your heart to break/ To feel the sweetest ache," Sildnes coos gently enough to make Sam Beam sound like a shouter, as the backdrop shifts toward night and then Halloween festivities. It all makes for an ode to beauty that isn't afraid to eschew ugliness altogether.

[from While I Walk You Home; out now on Division]