Atwood Magazine is excited to share our Editor’s Picks column, written and curated by Editor-in-Chief Mitch Mosk. Every week, Mitch will share a collection of songs, albums, and artists who have caught his ears, eyes, and heart. There is so much incredible music out there just waiting to be heard, and all it takes from us is an open mind and a willingness to listen. Through our Editor’s Picks, we hope to shine a light on our own music discoveries and showcase a diverse array of new and recent releases.

This week’s Editor’s Picks features Bon Iver, Japanese Breakfast, Samia, Michael Marcagi, spill tab, and Djo!

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Bon Iver’s music has always had soul, but never quite like this. With SABLE, fABLE, Justin Vernon and company channel love, healing, and human connection into a radiant, revelatory, and radical reinvention. Steeped in warmth and spiritual renewal, the band’s fifth studio album is a soulful, hopeful, and heartfelt odyssey – a luminous tapestry of intentionality, sweet sound, raw intimacy, and fearless, boundary-pushing sonic exploration. Achingly tender and breathtakingly beautiful inside and out, SABLE, fABLE marks a distinct, dramatic rebirth for the Bon Iver project, now in its 19^th year. At once intimate and expansive, it reflects on where we’ve been and imagines where we might go, bathed in golden light.

I can see where you’re coming from
I got time, I can give you some
I just love it when you call me “Baby”
Though it’s happening less lately
I can fit
I can fit it all
Nothing’s really wrong so
From now on

The songs of SABLE, fABLE feel less like compositions and more like offerings — vivid expressions of presence, compassion, identity, and catharsis that radiate with gentle grace and emotional immediacy. A mantra of mindful existence wrapped in glowing harmonies, “everything is peaceful love” shimmers with quiet joy and soft-spoken gratitude, while “there’s a rhythmn” pulses with kinetic energy and an undercurrent of awe, balancing intimacy and abstraction in classic Bon Iver fashion. “day one,” a collaboration with Dijon and Flock of Dimes, swells with wonder and renewal, its swirling textures and expansive melodies evoking the very feeling of a fresh start.

Don’t let it trouble your mind
Just take my love in your time

No need to hurry
Give me your worry
We can just keep it here for now

But if there’s one song that feels like the album’s emotional core, it’s “from” – a quiet masterclass in empathy that leans into love not as spectacle, but as steady presence. A breathtaking collaboration between Vernon, mk.gee, Jacob Collier, Tobias Jesso Jr., and others, “from” elevates Bon Iver’s sound into new emotional terrain as Vernon delivers a soul-stirring meditation on perspective, gratitude, and self-worth shaped through love. “I can see where you’re coming from / I got time, I can give you some,” he sings over mk.gee’s distinctive guitar tones, his raw voice a beacon of unfiltered honesty and care. There’s no rush, no pressure – just space, softness, and trust. “Don’t let it trouble your mind / Just take my love in your time,” he croons, backed by a chorus of spellbinding harmonies, offering comfort without condition. mk.gee’s signature textures blend seamlessly into Bon Iver’s sonic world, adding rhythmic nuance and atmospheric depth to a track that feels like a rich, warm exhale. “from” doesn’t just speak to love — it embodies it, in all its patience, presence, and quiet grace.

When I called you from the hotel
You said you were doing well
But I could tell
Just last May there was confetti in the car
And now, it seems we’re far apart
But I’m ready
Don’t you feel me?
Don’t you feel compelled?
Oh, you now can just be yourself
From now on

In this musical moment of stillness and surrender, Bon Iver remind us that love – real, grounding, transformative love – can be both compass and cure. “from” may be one track among many, but it captures the soul of SABLE, fABLE in its purest form: Patient, generous, and deeply human. As the album weaves through meditations on presence, perspective, and emotional renewal, this song stands out as a quiet, shimmering reminder of how far a little softness can go. It’s the kind of song that etches itself into your heart and stays there, not just as a favorite from the album, but as one of Bon Iver’s most timeless and tender offerings. For me, it already feels like forever.

Don’t let it trouble your mind
Just take my love in your time

I am ready, run from fear
I’m from somewhere far from here
So tell me when the coast is clear
Wanna kiss you ear from ear
Can I take another year?
Must I be so damn severe?
From the valley to the pier
I’m beset with what we could become

Tell me you ready
I can see where you’re coming from
I’m holding steady
We can just keep it here for now

There’s a quiet, comforting devastation to Japanese Breakfast’s dreamy “Picture Window,” a song that feels like it’s constantly exhaling grief and gathering it back in again. It’s gentle, celestial, and achingly present – an ambient meditation on memory and loss, wrapped in a softly seductive haze of synths and spectral harmonies. The track finds singer/songwriter Michelle Zauner reckoning with her own inner demons as she lives her life together with someone less weighed down by those same worries and fears; in contrast to her partner’s lightness, she carries the weight of what’s been lost – and that dichotomy brings its own emotional terrain to navigate.

My baby loves a port town
And a shuffle
Only cries on Ferris wheels
This baby’s on the verge of
If she lost him, would most certainly be committed

Are you not afraid of every waking minute
That your life could pass you by?

Yet it’s the chorus that lands with breathtaking weight:

“But all of my ghosts are real… All of my ghosts are my home.”

In a single line, Zauner captures the haunting familiarity of pain – the way sorrow can settle into us, not as something to vanquish, but something to live with. It’s not just a lyric; it’s a worldview; one that doesn’t flinch from the presence of grief, but folds it into the self. Heard casually, “Picture Window” might float by as simply upbeat, melodic, and warm – but linger a moment, and the ache sets in. That visceral repetition of “my ghosts” becomes both confession and acceptance: a recognition that the past, no matter how heavy, is part of who we are.

Heart breaking like a punch card
Keeps his mouth shut
Keeps his mind fixed and well hidden
You dream enough for two, dear
Picture window
Looking out at somewhere else

“Since I was young, I’ve struggled with intrusive thoughts of loved ones dying in terrible ways,” Zauner shared earlier this month. “My mind jumps to the worst-case scenario, a reflex only intensified by real experiences with loss. Loving someone who doesn’t share that same sense of worry can be both a relief and a challenge.”

“Picture Window” doesn’t search for resolution – it simply lets us sit inside the feeling. It’s a song about looking outward through glass while still being tethered to everything that lives inside. And in that tension, Japanese Breakfast offers one of their most quietly profound statements to date – a glowing centerpiece on her latest album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), where grief, memory, and love coalesce in soft, stunning harmony.

Do you not conceive of my death at every minute
While your life just passes you by?

But all of my ghosts are real
All of my ghosts are real
All of my ghosts are my home
All of my ghosts are real
All of my ghosts are real
All of my ghosts are my home

“A little death goes a long way.” Samia delivers the line with such disarming straightforwardness, you might not think too deeply about it. But you do – she makes sure of that, her voice intentionally lingering on every word just long enough for its full weight to settle on the soul. On “Hole in a Frame,” one of the most stirring and surreal songs off her upcoming sophomore album Bloodless, this lyric acts as both emotional thesis and existential mantra – a recognition of how even the smallest losses, slips, or ego deaths can ripple through our lives with outsized force.

Nothing goes how it was gonna
You miss the boat, you gotta swim
But I don’t have to tell you that
Tulsa, Oklahoma, hole in a frame
Sid was vicious
And the drywall cracked
Like an autograph
That endlessly appreciates
A little death goes a long way

What does it mean, to experience “a little death”? In French, la petite mort is often a euphemism (go look it up), but in Samia’s world, the phrase carries a different sort of weight. It evokes the countless tiny disappearances we endure – of selves, of illusions, of certainties. The death of a version of you that no longer fits. The quiet ending of something unspoken. A realization that changes the course without announcing itself.

“‘Hole in a Frame’ is about a fascination with disappearing and the power of absence,” Samia shared. There’s comfort in emptiness here—not a void, but a kind of clearing. An invitation to step out of focus, to un-be for a moment. She’s not lamenting these vanishings so much as studying them, maybe even finding refuge within them. That line – repeated like some sacred text by the end – transforms from lament to liberation.

There I am where I should not be
Obviously, I bought the ticket
and took the ride
Pissing in the wind and
Trying to circumvent your
line of vision from stage right
Like a photograph
Of the last time I came
A little death goes a long way

The song itself drifts like a memory, all soft corners and elliptical phrasing. From Tulsa, Oklahoma to cracked drywall and stage right, Samia builds a collage of images that flicker and fade like overexposed film. There’s no narrative, just snapshots: Fractured, beautiful, and half-submerged. Like the “hole in a frame” she references, we’re left to sit with what’s missing.

In the end, “Hole in a Frame” doesn’t give answers – it leans into absence. And in doing so, Samia captures something that feels oddly hopeful: That there’s strength in slipping away, peace in being momentarily undefined. A little death goes a long way – and maybe that’s the point.

It’s raining, I’m straying from the border
You know what they say
about the baby and the coroner
Maybe I was born for this
Dying to myself
While you hold the onus
Will you hold the onus?
A little death goes a long
A little death goes a long
A little death goes a long
A little death goes a long way

“Midwest Kid” is an anthem, a homecoming, a reckoning — but more than anything, it’s a reclamation. Michael Marcagi’s first single of the year and the title track off his brand new EP (out today via Warner Records), “Midwest Kid” is the kind of song that wears its heart — and its hometown — on its sleeve. It’s not just for those raised among cornfields, rust-belt towns, or big sky plains; it’s for anyone who’s carried a piece of their past into the present. Anyone who’s ever longed for simpler times, for front yards and childhood laughter, for something that felt like safety — even if it never truly was.

I wanna get lost in the ocean
Where no one knows my name
And all of my confusion
Can wash out in a wave

I wanna go back to my front yard
Just laughing like a child
The sun over my warm skin
Haven’t felt that for a while, for a while

“It’s about the place I was born, raised, and still call home,” the Cincinnati, Ohio native explains. “It’s about starting this crazy new chapter of my life while navigating and maintaining the relationships I have with friends and family in my hometown. I’m very proud of where I’m from, and I hope to carry that with me forever.”

There’s a rawness to “Midwest Kid” — emotionally and sonically. Over driving guitar strums and a steady beat, Marcagi blends nostalgia with vulnerability, singing of sleepless nights, buried secrets, and the ache of not being believed. “I’m just another broken, messed-up Midwest kid,” he repeats in the track’s charged refrain, turning a moment of self-doubt into an instantly memorable rallying cry. The lyric hits like a confession, but it also feels like solidarity — an acknowledgment that brokenness and pride can coexist. That home can both wound you and be your anchor.

And all my fears
I can’t let go
And I’ve been holding on
For way too long
And you don’t believe me
You never did
I’m just another broken
messed up midwest kid

“I wanna go back to my front yard, just laughing like a child,” he sings, reaching for something just out of reach. And isn’t that the heart of it? The yearning to be seen. To go back. To move forward without letting go of where you came from.

“Midwest Kid” is a song of place, yes — but also of personhood. It’s a reminder that identity is messy and beautiful and full of ghosts we learn to live with. Marcagi doesn’t pretend to have it all figured out. He just sings the truth as he knows it — and in doing so, he gives the rest of us something to hold on to, too.

And all the nights that I couldn’t sleep
The secrets that I couldn’t keep
It all comes rushing back to me
I can’t escape even in my dreams
Oh and all the nights that I couldn’t sleep
The secrets that I couldn’t keep
It all comes rushing back to me,
it all comes rushing back

And all my fears
I can’t let go
And I’ve been holding on
For way too long
And you don’t believe me
You never did
I’m just another broken messed up midwest kid

Achingly intimate, unapologetically alternative, and soaked in seductive emotional static, “Angie” is a hypnotic, psychedelic fever dream. The title track off spill tab’s long-awaited debut album doesn’t ask for our attention; it pulls us under, wrapping our ears – and by extension, our souls – in waves of overdriven guitar, hazy synth, ethereal falsetto, and feverish, unfiltered emotion. It’s raw and churning, delicate and destructive — a soft, shiver-inducing scream into the void, with melodies that flicker like hallucinations just out of reach.

I have you lined up, up, up
Angie, you’re on my mind
(Ooh, oh-oh-ooh, ooh)
I hate you, I don’t, don’t, don’t
Angie, she’s on my mind

“I have you lined up, up, up / Angie, you’re on my mind,” spill tab – aka LA-based French-Korean singer, songwriter, and producer Claire Chicha – sings, her voice barely clinging to the chaos that surrounds it. There’s vulnerability here, but also volatility – a push-pull of desire and detachment that unravels over ghostly harmonies and fuzzed-out textures. It’s a song of obsession, frustration, and fractured identity, where longing and loathing collide in a single breath: “I hate you, I don’t, don’t, don’t…”

The song’s dreamlike intensity mirrors the story of its creation. “‘Angie’ was started at the top of 2023… I was in a weird place at the time,” spill tab shares. “I wasn’t feeling inspired… I was just really struggling to write in general.” But surrounded by collaborators John Hill and Jared Solomon (aka solomonophonic), something shifted. “I picked up this beautiful nylon in the corner and just started tuning it to whatever way sounded nice to me, and the initial chords of ‘Angie’ came out. It was called ‘BostonNova’ until it wasn’t, and I just knew I loved it from day one.”

That spontaneity, that intuitive spark, pulses through the final track. “Angie” feels like a song pulled from the subconscious – pieced together from intrusive thoughts, flickering memories, and unspoken fears. It plays with absence as much as presence; it’s music that haunts more than it resolves.

Big times
But this time I’ll tell you anything
Make a fool of me tonight
Beholden by desire
Darling, your name (Ooh-ooh)
Plays on (Plays on)
The back brain (Oh-oh, oh-ooh)

I have you lined up, up, up
Angie, you’re on my mind
(Ooh, oh-oh-ooh, ooh)
I hate you, I don’t, don’t, don’t
Angie, she’s on my mind

Is it a love song? Is it an ode to intoxication? Is it a confessional – an act of unbridled catharsis? Perhaps it’s simple heat-of-the-moment abstraction, or maybe it’s really all of the above. As a centerpiece of ANGIE, the song embodies the album’s emotional core. “I love this collection of songs so deeply. They feel more honest than anything I’ve created in a long time,” spill tab says of the record. “It’s really special to hear all these experiences on love and loss, rejection and passion, walking away and holding on too tight, all coexisting together in one place: A culmination of these last few years of my life.”

And that’s what “Angie” becomes: Not just a song, but a space where contradiction lives comfortable – fragile and furious, lucid and lost, painfully present even as it fades. “Angie” is both a weight put on and a weight lifted — a lush, intensely immersive moment of churn and charm we’ll keep returning to, long after the music’s gone.

I have you lined up, up, up
Angie, you’re on my mind
(Ooh, oh-oh-ooh, ooh)
I hate you, I don’t, don’t, don’t
Angie, she’s on my mind

Djo’s “Potion” is soft magic — a gentle daydream of longing, love, and quiet hope. A standout track off The Crux, Joe Keery’s third album under his musical moniker Djo, “Potion” floats in like a breeze through an open window: warm, wistful, and wonderfully strange. Its easy, lulling rhythm feels almost deceptively simple, but beneath the surface is a world of wonder and yearning.

When I wake up at 3 in the morning
Witching hour too strong
Like a witch, I know I need my potion
I, I, I might find love
I’m looking for it in an alphabet soup cup
I’m looking under my thumb
It’s looking like a little rain cloud loves me
I, I, I…

Anchored by lilting acoustic guitars, subtle percussion, and Keery’s tender falsetto, “Potion” trades the frenetic, technicolor swirl of previous singles like “Basic Being Basic” and “Delete Ya” for something more intimate, more vulnerable, more stripped-down – more human. It’s Laurel Canyon by way of dream-pop; delicate and stripped-down, yet quietly revelatory. “‘Potion’ is like your favorite pair of blue jeans,” Keery shares. “I’d been working on Travis picking when I wrote this song, so it’s kind of like if Harry Nilsson and Lindsey Buckingham had a baby.”

Lyrically, “Potion” swims in sweet surrealism and sentimentality: “I’m looking for it in an alphabet soup cup / I’m looking under my thumb…” There’s humor in the metaphor, but a heavy heart behind it — a soul searching the everyday for something extraordinary. For connection. For someone who’ll stay.

The chorus, feather-light and hauntingly beautiful, is where the track’s quiet emotional power blooms:

I’ll try for all of my life
Just to find someone
who leaves on the light for me
Leaves on the light for me
Ah-ah

There’s a tenderness in that imagery — the softest form of devotion, of being remembered and held in someone else’s world. It’s a hope that doesn’t demand fireworks, just a light left on.

With “Potion,” Keery offers not just a song, but a moment – a gentle pause in the album’s arc, full of sincerity, vulnerability, and warmth. It’s the kind of track you return to when the world feels too loud; the kind of track that doesn’t just ask to be heard, but to be felt.

Mr Magic and the trapdoor ladies
Big walk, no talk
Glitz and glamour doesn’t age like wine does
I’m countin’ on love
When the book is in the final chapter
Man, it’s always sad to go
Whatcha taking from the rightful lender?
I, I, I…

Since first debuting Djo in 2019, Keery has consistently proven himself a singular voice and a standout songwriter — and yet “Potion,” with its lightness, its humanity, and its fleeting, comforting grace, still feels fresh, fun, and revelatory. In its stillness, it offers something rare: A reminder that even in life’s most uncertain moments, there’s beauty in trying, and solace in the hope that someone, somewhere, might leave on the light.

In the sea of 2025’s songs, “Potion” is an instant standout — tender, timeless, easy to love, and impossible to forget.

I’ll try for all of my life
Just to find someone
who leavеs on the light for me
Leavеs on the light for me
Ah-ah

I’ll try for all of my life
Just to find someone
who leaves on the light for me
Leaves on the light for me
Ah-ah

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Editor’s Picks

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