Florist

Just how gentle and gorgeous can the heartbreak and hope of life sound? Florist, from New York, seems to have an answer. A dozen years ago, Emily Sprague split from small-town upstate New York for Albany, cobbling together Florist in the capital city’s D.I.Y. enclave. A subsequent move to Brooklyn, though, forever changed Sprague and the band. After nearly being killed by a bus while riding her bicycle, Sprague understood both the fragility and force of her own life, dual reckonings that began to infiltrate her songs in equal measure. “This beautiful thing happens every day—it’s called the sun, it’s called my blood,” Sprague spoke-sung over a carousel of keyboards on “Thank You,” from 2016’s The Birds Outside Sang. “And it’s the only thing making us want to be alive.”

During the last decade, Florist has blossomed in the liminal space between folk-rock and New Age experimentalism. The band’s sprawling self-titled album, from 2022, found Sprague cooing existential hymns over finger-picked beauty, sighing slide guitar, and synthesizers that traced the cosmos. But Florist unlatched newfound consistency and concision on 2025’s Jellywish without forsaking sonic or lyrical idiosyncrasy, Sprague reckoning with age and anxiety over 10 songs that stared down grief to see, again, the sun rising through it each morning. “Should anything be pleasure when suffering is everywhere?” Sprague sings, capturing the emotional unease of modern existence in a single stunning moment, impossibly gorgeous and heartbreaking.