@

The lush and happily ragged folk-pop of the Philadelphia duo @ represents a telling merger of the physical and digital worlds. Stone Filipczak and Victoria Rose first interacted in the East Coast house-show scene, their assorted projects sharing basements and warehouses for cheap gigs. They began working together on songs by sending tracks back and forth, each adding soft harmonies and instrumental textures to the other’s tunes about despair, expectation, and survival. They self-released the results as Mind Palace Music in 2021 with low expectations, but the recordings—with their emo candor and their late ’60s folk-rock sensibility—steadily found an audience online, leading to a 2023 reissue by Carpark and a 2026 deal with 4AD for the follow-up, Autosmile.

Rose and Filipczak, though, wisely maintained their process despite the critical accolades and the commercial prospects. They continued to write and record songs alone, with Rose often using a coffee cup in a microphone stand’s stead, then sent the results to the other half for upgrades. That idea allows for an unmitigated honesty in these songs, a window into the deepest woes and highest hopes of them both. Filipczak begins opener “Bird,” for instance, down the well of very dark thoughts, while Rose counters on “Love in the Dark” with reassurance, a sense that whatever path they’re on is the right one. “There’s a line in the sand that is drawn/between luck and the work of the bond that we’ve won,” she sings, Filipczak trailing her over big acoustic strums and tiny keyboard melodies. These are songs of reassurance and endurance, of admitting the worst to a confidant and then pressing on, together.