I don’t know how you’ve been dealing with the new year’s glut of death and terror, but I’ve been taking refuge in the drones, beats and chants of a French duo called Heimat. Not only is their upcoming debut album better than anything I heard last year, it improves with every listen—like a quality album used to do.

At once psychedelic and martial, the music Olivier Demeaux (a/k/a Olivier 2mo) of Cheveu and Armelle Oberle (a/k/a Bisou Bisou) of the Dreams make together is not easily categorized (at least one person has suggested the term “heretic wave”), but I’ll be nose-fucked by wolves if this gorgeously recorded, sparsely orchestrated LP doesn’t take me to the same weird territory as PiL’s Flowers of Romance and the Residents’ Not Available. I’m tempted to compare Oberle’s oracular vocals to those of Amon Düül II’s Renate Knaup, whom I revere, but it’s probably a lazy identification on my part.
 

 
The ten-song Heimat will be jointly released by California’s Kill Shaman Records and France’s Teenage Menopause next month. Below, stream the album’s first track, “Wieder ja!”