Dubbed out samples and churning white noise are making endless rounds in increasingly lifeless indie pop. It’s hard to find the pearls without sifting through lots of lackluster muck.Vows’ debut album, Winter’s Grave stands out from that mess without ditching the musical aesthetics that has made this style so damn popular. The seasonal title of the work proves to be strikingly accurate. With the exception of the opening tracks’ warm Rhodes piano invoking some wintry nostalgia, the album pulls quickly away from the wool and gloom of this year’s winter, diving face first into a pool of summery shimmer. It’s hard not to feel the pull of the band’s continual optimism for the beachy goodness that late May holds. “Parallel”, the second track, stumbles around its first half in a wintry mix of chillingly hollow bass coupled with haunting high-end organ jabs and electric guitar caked in icy VST reverb. Around the two-minute mark, a sudden flurry of ecstatic shaker madness greets the listener like the moment when pollen and heat slap you in the face and you realize… summer has arrived.Jeff Pupa, the mind behind Bone Blanket and other central Jersey indie projects, does not abandon his song writing skills. He manages to keep his songs genuine despite the generous use of post-production effects and warm synthetic sheen not found in much of his other work. Soft meandering toy box melodies in tracks like “Unreal Love” and “Queen Baby” do much to set the mood for the album. Pupa vocally channels his inner Zach Condon, crooning on “Unreal Love” and “Anywhere You Go.” Most of the album, however, has Pupa’s signature powerful vocal chords largely where they were in his previous projects, give or take some reverb. It’s exciting to see some of the experimentation being added so gradually, so as not to dilute what has been working so well. Most of the songs are based around lyrics and the feelings they evoke, but unlike other folky projects from the Crystal Mountain Music Collective, the words here often recede into the mix so heavily or get so lost in their own psychedelic looped ambiance that they become part of the background. All the while, Nillo’s warbling piano lines glide in and out of the mix to keep the water-like flow consistent. The keyboard’s summery drone builds into the shakes, pops, and crackles that return to the melodic guitar hooks that led you there in the first place.Soft percussive elements push through the album’s ambiance enough to drive many of the tracks into the frantic pop hooks that make them irresistibly endearing. Stand out tracks like “Queen Baby”, “Parallel”, and the title track, “Winter’s Grave”, largely sum up the feel but don’t entirely do it justice. There is plenty of density to go around here. Even after a few listens, the work stands to highlight various aspects of emotional rides associated with the season’s change. Pupa’s voice is never so washed out as to be unmistakable, like a beacon in the dense fog of stereo textures. The jittery evolution into droning chaos within the closer, “Dead Ends”, makes the trees lose their leaves, inviting you to hit repeat to thaw the next year’s winter all over again. Fans of Pupa’s clean folk song writing ability will not be disappointed, but it is important to note that much of the acoustic sensibility of previous endeavors has been shed in favor of more experimental ambiance. I hope we can expect more from this duo, as this has been one of the most innovative and fun sonic trips to come from Jersey in recent memory.- Matt Jack