Rivulets

It's been a banner year for Sam Beam, thanks largely to his band Iron & Wine's touching musical cameo in Garden State. The attention resulted in serious sales for his latest album, Our Endless Numbered Days, which proves fans can never get too much of a sensitive singer and his guitar. That's great news for Nathan Admundson. The Colorado native has somehow hidden for half a decade under the name Rivulets, but if there's justice in this world, he'll garner similar popularity for his latest EP, You've Got Your Own. Much like Iron & Wine, Rivulets thrives on acoustic simplicity, but though Beam's strength is pretty poetry, Admundson has little more to say than repeated phrases like "It's gonna rain all winter long." Luckily, lyrics aren't the point on this five-song EP: YGYO is a work of sonic wonder. Each plucked guitar string echoes and warbles against the sounds of heartbeat-percussion, reversed-piano and clanging ride cymbals, as if a thousand microphones were arranged in the guy's bedroom, and Admundson's voice is thick with ache and longing, but his delivery is too hushed to become annoying or excessive. Songs like "Waited for You" are so slow and dreamy that they beg for a movie cameo of their own.