Song of the Day: WOODS - Leaves Like Glass

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on the Afternoon Show with Kevin Cole, is "Leaves Like Glass," by WOODS from 2014 album With Light and With Love on Woodsist.

WOODS - Leaves Like Glass (MP3)

Always able to see the forest for the trees, WOODS never ceases to explore uncharted musical territory. The New York rockers hold a great degree of control over their sound, dealing out experimental jams at a prolific rate. Their seventh album, With Light and With Love, illustrates a stylistic maturation and a shift in their artistic direction. Overall, it's a comprehensive, sprawling album which exhibits the band's diverse modes of composition, utter tenacity, and striking consistency. From their earlier stoney-pop work on At Rear House to their Kraut-anthems on Sun and Shade, no matter what WOODS experiments with in their songwriting, it seems that their finalized products always deliver solid results. With Light and With Love collects these varied influences and displays them, refinements and all. In "Leaves Like Glass," WOODS mixes high-energy, southern-fried folk with Jeremy Earl's clean-filtered, dreamy pipes. The brief guitar solos, purring organ, and lyrical thematics come together make sure that every second of the song hits the high mark that WOODS has set. More about the album can be found on KEXP's review of With Light and With Love. Take root, and get lost in WOODS now.

WOODS are currently touring and will be in Seattle on July 31 at Neumos with Foxygen. They'll also be playing the 5th annual Woodsist Fest in Big Sur on August 5-6. You can find more tour dates on their Facebook page and follow WOODS on Twitter for timely updates. For now, enjoy this super-cool super 8mm video for "It Ain't Easy", from their 2012 album, Bend Beyond: