Stream: Letting Up Despite Great Faults, ‘Corners Pressed’ and ‘Gemini’

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Letting Up Despite Great Faults (Photo by Elysia Perkins)

Letting Up Despite Great Faults formed in L.A. during the late Aughts with a name that twisted tongues like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s (though actually derived from a Blonde Redhead song) and fuzzy indie-pop (think M83 in a bedroom) to match.

Founder Mike Lee and Kent Zambrana eventually moved to Austin, Texas, and released the albums “Untogether” (2012) and “Neon” (2014), which followed their self-titled debut in 2009. (And while feeling some pangs of nostalgia, let’s wish a slightly belated happy 10th anniversary to their video for “Teenage Tide,” which features now-AT&T pitch woman Milana Vayntrub.)

With singer-guitarist Annah Frisette and longtime drummer Daniel Schmidt on board, Letting Up Despite Great Faults are returning with “IV,” their first album in 7 1/2 years. It’s out March 4.

The new singles “Corners Pressed” and “Gemini” are exemplary of Letting Up’s gauzy, shimmering dream-pop, with Lee’s presence in the mix incrementally more forward than on much of the band’s catalog. Reliably, they are lush soundscapes for those swirling emotions that go round and round and eventually find a home in your personal ether.

||| Stream: “Corners Pressed” and “Gemini”

||| Also: Watch the videos

||| Live: Letting Up Despite Great Faults will play a show in L.A. on April 25. Information to come.

||| Previously: Live at Make Music Pasadena 2013, “Untogether,” “Bulletproof Girl,”  “Visions,” “Our Younger Noise,” “Standing Still,” “Sophia in Gold,” “Teenage Tide,” 2009 interview