The joyful, clear-voiced beauty of High Places stands among the most beloved and compelling new music of the decade. Layering energy-rich, bouncing electronic beats, gentle percussive tones, and bright, celebratory vocals, this Brooklyn-based duo have created a language that is both unique and inviting, an excited, deeply emotional, and friendly party. Following an impressive range of live performances—from D.I.Y. warehouse shows in Brooklyn to nightclubs in Tokyo to Gilkey Elementary School in Plainwell, Michigan—High Places bring this friendly party to the New Museum.

Portland’s Grouper makes hazy, cobweb-delicate music, a woozy haunted house of dusty pop structures and mournful lullabies. Built from shambling guitarwork, broken-music-box melodies and ghostly, mournful vocals, the songs are blanketed in a gloom of reverb, all shadow-lurking melody and suffocated beauty.

Banner image: High Places. Photo by Hisham Bharoocha