“It’s all in your heart / You said don’t doubt it, boy / Don’t you know life’s too short.” But Hovvdy’s new album, out on Arts & Crafts today, is not too short at all. Like Taylor Swift who just released a 31 track album, Hovvdy are going for the long player, hoping that fans like me, (Hovvdy is kinda my Taylor Swift, as an indie head always looking for the most authentic, heart moving music), won’t be disappointed. And I wasn’t, at all.

Like Taylor Swift, there is a bit of a formula to Hovvdy’s music. But like Taylor Swift, they know how to mix the potion in just the right way, to create a special type of magic. They remind me of another favorite band, Pinegrove, who feel so comfortable in their groove, like a pair of warm socks. “I wanted you to know how much it means,” they sing on one of the more adventurous songs on the album, “Meant,” which recalls some of the chiller hip hop out there, and which happens to sound a lot like a Taylor Swift song. (Forgive my constant reference: but it does!)

The album starts with the tenuous relationship we all have with time and chance. “Our time is a volcano,” as they put it on one of the album closers, “Bad News.” The album is cut through with a commitment to the heart in a world where plans don’t always pan out as we expect them to. But there are tender moments throughout. “How are you an angel? / So sweet when I’m sleeping in.”

“Teach me a lesson / How to stay humble with pride.” They must know what great songwriters that they are, even singing in one song, “Sing you a song / I will,” and we’re lucky to get serenaded by such a tender and beautiful bunch of chaps as Hovvdy. It’s 19 songs, at about fifty minutes, and it is one Hovvdy banger after another. While I feel like there is a bit more meat to, say, a Pinegrove album, (or even, admittedly, a Taylor Swift album,) there is a lot to grab onto in a Hovvdy record, lyrically.

“How long is the road I see / A stranger to sympathy / Closing my eyes / When you tell me you don’t believe.” It is an album of “bruising faith” and “a matter of grace,” as Billy Corgan put it in his stunner of a song “To Sheila.” I’m thrilled to get a new Hovvdy album, let alone such a long outing as this one. If you like Hovvdy, I think you’ll love this one. If you don’t know them yet, it gives you time to grow on them.

Order Hovvdy HERE