Freelance Whales will play Sasquatch! on May 30.Artist: Freelance WhalesAlbum:

WeathervanesRelease date: April 13Label: Frenchkiss/Mom + PopRating (Skip, Stream, or Buy): BuyDownload: “Generator ^ Second Floor” Freelance Whales are a group of one-time buskers from Queens who write sweet-sounding and quirky songs about things likes their past lives as grains of sand and ghosts that haunt the English countryside. But while music and lyrics this twee can often come off as uncomfortably cloying or smarmy (hello, Decemberists), Weathervanes is the most endearing record I’ve heard this year. I like an album that picks a theme and sticks with it, and with its choral harmonies, ambient songs like “Broken Horse,” brief interludes of harmonium or glockenspiel, and spacey choruses like, “This is me starring in a stranger’s nightmare,” Weathervanes plays like a beautiful daze. You get the sense that Freelance Whales are just wandering through a dreamspace, and more essentially, that they’ve grasped and come to almost zen-like terms with the brevity of life. And that’s what Weathervanes is about – the striking and unavoidable transcendence of our time on earth. On the first single, “Generator ^ Second Floor,” a banjo gently strums as lead singer Judah Dadone gives instructions on how to handle his corpse after death – “Don’t fix my smile/ Life is long enough/ We will put this flesh/ Into the ground again.” He’s not being snarky – this is all remarkably lucid and sincere stuff.