Marcel Winatschek

Dirty Projectors: About To Die

Dirty Projectors have always operated in that space where experimentation and genuine song craft somehow coexist. Dave Longstreth’s voice doing those fractured, angular things over the band’s constantly shifting arrangements—it shouldn’t work, but there’s something about the intelligence behind it that pulls you in. They’ve never been the kind of band you stumble onto; you find them because you were looking for something weird and precise at the same time. There’s a phase everyone goes through where their records feel essential, where you can’t figure out why more people aren’t listening to them, and then you realize it’s because most people don’t want their indie rock to demand this much attention. But that’s always been the point. They exist in their own lane, doing things their way, and the fact that they’re still around and still strange feels increasingly rare.