NAILAH HUNTER Lovegaze (Fat Possum) — Given the obvious talent she displays on Lovegaze, her debut full-length, there’s no reason to doubt that Nailah Hunter can create enveloping, ethereal music anywhere she goes. It’s still so appropriate that she decamped from her home base in Los Angeles to huddle down in a British studio somewhere in the chilly mist off the English Channel to shape these ten tracks into tantalizing audio glimmers. Hunter takes great gulps of the air that will eventually waft up to Kate Bush in her empire of dreamy dreams. Working with producer Cicely Goulder, who’s arguably best known as one half of arty Europop duo Kaleida, Hunter makes music that is intricate and somehow warmly elusive. Hunter is predominantly a harpist, but that instrument is less present as a main figure than as a guiding light. Whether the rich and airy “Finding Mirrors” or the artful indie operetta of the title cut, the songs on the album glow with the feeling that those plucked strings evoke. Calling the album otherworldly undersells its ghostly, delicately unnerving beauty. Ignite your own loving gaze with the following tracks: “Strange Delight,” “Bleed,” and “Garden.”

DUCKS LTD. Harm’s Way (Carpark) — The throwback charms of Harm’s Way, the sophomore album from Toronto duo Ducks Ltd., are like a little bit of magic. Yes, there was once a time when a couple guys with guitars and a slacker’s knack with a pop hook felt they could take on the world, and spins of their records seems to bear that improbably confidence out. Tom McGreevy and Evan Lewis deliver a tight set of songs that are jolting and joyous as a quick motorbike ride around the block. Although it doesn’t sound dated, Harm’s Way could have been plopped into a late nineteen-eighties college radio playlist without causing listener to gaze with confusion at their receivers. Album opener “Hollowed Out” is like the missing link between Green on Red and the the Ocean Blue, and “The Main Thing” recalls vintage R.E.M., if the gents from Athens decided to find out how quickly they could race through one of their jangle-pop gem. The pogo-ing Feelies beat of “On Our Way to the Rave” are joined to irresistibly snappy lyrics (“One if by land, two by sea/ Either would satisfy me/ If all night the dark should abide/ Then I’ll still ride”). Some of the words penned by Ducks Ltd. have a toughness to them (McGreevy dubs the assembled to be “songs about struggling), but the music is largely buoyant and tuneful, as if the band are determined to earn catharsis through catchiness. Can they pull it off? Don’t bet against them. Put yourself in Harm’s Way with “Cathedral City,” “Train Full of Gasoline,” “A Girl, Running,” and “Heavy Bag.”