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Album: Is the Is Are

Artist: DIIV

Release: February 5

Highly anticipated and long awaited, Brooklyn shoegazers DIIV had a daunting task to compete with the first and critically acclaimed album Oshin. However, this creative quartet stormed into 2016 with Is The Are, providing fans with the effortless guitar-driven pop that brought success in earlier years. Both beautiful and dark, the album provides 17 tracks of hazed, jangled guitars with ethereal melodies guaranteed to be stuck in your head for days. This album is a dreamy ride through both the highs and lows of addictions and other demons; out the end of these personal struggles paved the way for an album that established itself in a class of its own and as one of the top albums of 2016.

By Rachel Westwood