Darlingside - Pilot Machines (2012)

Known for their layered harmonies and intelligent songwriting, indie folk group Darlingside emerged in 2012 with the lush Pilot Machines. A band of string players who combine classical, folk, and rock, they quickly established themselves as a dynamic live act and continued to refine their widescreen baroque pop sound on subsequent efforts like Extralife (2018) and Fish Pond Fish (2020).
Darlingside, which features the talents of Don Mitchell, Auyon Mukharji, Harris Paseltiner, and David Senft, formed in 2009 while the bandmembers were attending Williams College in Western Massachusetts. Boasting a strong vocal presence from the very start, layering their songs with cinematic, multi-part group harmonies, the newly minted band coined the term "string rock" to describe their sound, and began building a fan base while touring throughout New England in support of their first self-produced EP. Their debut album, Pilot Machines, followed in 2012, after which the group slimmed down to a drummerless quartet.
Reinventing themselves as a richly layered string band with a crafty pop sound, Darlingside signed with Nashville label Thirty Tigers and released their second LP, Birds Say, in 2015. The EP Whippoorwill: B-Sides from the Birds Say Recordings followed on More Doug Records in 2016, and the group returned to Thirty Tigers for their third studio album, Extralife. Released in early 2018, it took on a heavier tone that reflected political, social, and environmental anxieties. Two years later, Darlingside returned with the bucolic Fish Pond Fish, which looked to themes of geology, meteorology, ornithology, astronomy, and botany for inspiration.