It’s a good day to be someone who feels ways about stuff, as NPR is streaming new albums from Death Cab For Cutie and Sufjan Stevens, and—as is to be expected—they both lean pretty hard on emotions. According to the NPR-riffic write-ups that accompany the streams, Death Cab’s album, Kintsugi, is named for “the Japanese art of fixing fragmented ceramics with precious metals, giving broken art more value than it had when it was whole.” And, in case you’re not familiar with metaphors, NPR also adds that it’s all heavily influenced by frontman Ben Gibbard’s recent divorce from Zooey Deschanel. As for Sufjan, his album is called Carrie & Lowell, which NPR explains is a reference to his mother, who died in 2012. Also, the album “sheds most traces of the singer’s whimsical side.” In other words, it sounds like fun times all around.
You can listen to Death Cab’s Kintsugi here, and you can listen to Sufjan’s Carrie & Lowell here. Both albums will be available wherever you choose to buy music on March 31.