Best New Music! The Antlers are a band from Brooklyn,a skyscraping blend of the ambient and the anthemic,. They swing for the bleachers at a time when it’s fashionable to bunt. Given the bluster of the music and its fixation on death and illness, it’s impossible not to be reminded of Arcade Fire’s Funeral. It’s starry atmosphere and bludgeoning tenderness evoke Cursive’s Domestica with a pop-noise sheen. And like these groups, the Antlers plumb that elusive place where the personally specific becomes universal.

Members of Miracle Fortress and Bell Orchestre. The band uses an uncommon set of instruments featuring guitars, a French horn, piles of keyboards, drums and percussion. From Montreal