You can now stream Braids‘ sophomore album Flourish // Perish via Pitchfork Advance – an album we’ve been looking forward to since last May. Orthographically, we’re not really sure what the double forward slashes mean, but stylistically we’re a fan.

The group, consisting of members Taylor Smith, Raphaelle Standell-Preston, and Austin Tufts (and formerly Katie Lee), formed as high school students in Calgary before getting big city dreams (sorry Calgary) and moving to Montreal, where they released their successful first album Native Speaker. The new album is noticeably more “digital” than the last, with “In Kind” being the only track on the album to feature guitars.

Lead singer Standell-Preston explains, “Over the two years that we toured Native Speaker, we became really heavily into and inspired by electronic music, we listened to so much of it. It’s strikingly beautiful, it’s very amazing and to me it reflects where we have gone to as a human race in 2013 and our involvement with the iPhone and laptops and everybody being interconnected”.

The group will be returning to Toronto Friday, November 1st at Blk Box.

You can listen to all 10 tracks on Flourish // Perish here.

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Jeremy Schipper is an intern who wants to learn how to play the synth at Toronto Standard. You can follow him on Twitter at @jeromeoschipps.