@ - MIND PALACE MUSIC Vinyl LP

It’s fitting that Philadelphia guitarist Victoria Rose and Baltimore producer/musician Stone Filipczak named their band @ (pronounced “At”) — a symbol that calls to mind the detachment of an email exchange or a Twitter mention. The folk-pop duo created their debut album Mind Palace Music almost entirely remotely from, sending each other recordings over iMessage from their respective cities throughout fall/winter 2020. But although its creators were 100 miles away, the 11-track album gleams with a sense of closeness, tied together with @’s penchant for deeply personal and candid lyrics. With an affinity for blending digital with analog elements, @ describe Mind Palace Music as “hyperfolk,” though the record never feels self-indulgent — hitting the sweet spot between pleasantly familiar and refreshingly innovative. “We were pretty aware of trying to make something well-crafted that would hold up,” Filipczak says. “I was stoked that I could show some of the tracks to my grandma and she