Earlier this year on his blog, Tom Krell, the Colorado songwriter who records and performs as How To Dress Well, wrote that he wants to make songs that “help us get nearer to affects in a sweet way, like how one approaches an injured animal in the wild, or the way one chases after the memory of a dream: by approaching carefully, quietly, on its terms.” Krell’s latest album, September’s Total Loss, effectively combines the fragility one associates with dreams and the bare ferity of nature. In his diaphanous voice, Krell sings about self-doubt, suicide, and subsuming emotional pain to the accompaniment of moody, sweeping keyboards and synths. Others, like album highlights like “& It Was U” and “Running Back” (which quotes the chorus of Ashanti’s 2002 number one hit “Foolish”) rhythmic snaps and harmonies that recall the sensual R&B of Mariah Carey or Bobby Brown. It’s a freezingly gorgeous sound. With Beacon, USF. ERIN K. THOMPSON

Sat., Dec. 8, 7 p.m., 2012