Pinegrove

Pinegrove started in Montclair, New Jersey, around singer and guitarist Evan Stephens Hall and drummer Zack Levine, who had known each other since childhood. Hall's lyrics are dense and talky, full of half-finished thoughts, self-corrections and close attention to friendship and miscommunication, sung over guitars that lean toward country as often as toward emo.

The band's wider audience arrived with Cardinal, released on Run for Cover Records. The self-released Skylight followed, then Marigold on Rough Trade and later 11:11. A simple drawing of two interlocking squares serves as the band's emblem and turns up on records, merchandise and stage backdrops. Live, crowds tend to shout Hall's long, tangled lines back at him word for word.