States

After a string of well-received EPs and singles, Australia's Paper Kites released their debut album, States, in 2013. Though they're often tagged as a folk-oriented act, folk is just one of many sonic strands running through this album. At their inception a few years earlier, the band may have hewed closer to a folk-based feel. Here, there's still plenty of acoustic guitar at the core of their sound, plus the occasional banjo, but States is as much about the Kites' hazy, hypnotic brand of ambient indie pop as anything else. Sam Bentley and Christina Lacy's voices embrace each other gently and elegantly, as the Kites' aqueous arrangements move at a measured, mesmerizing pace, underlining the quintet's knack for both texture and tunefulness. Yet States sometimes rises above a dreamy murmur; the epic-length closing cut, "I Done You So Wrong," slowly builds to a grand, almost orchestral kind of symphonic Americana (the group's Aussie origins notwithstanding).