Perfume Genius

This year record label Jagjaguwar is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and they’ve separated their celebration into four parts. The first was dubbed Dilate Your Heart, which featured the collaboration between poet Ross Gay and artists such as Bon Iver, Gia Margaret, and Mary Lattimore. The latest installment is titled This is a Mindfulness Drill, which is out June 25 and features a full-length tribute to Richard Youngs’ formative solo album Sapphie by Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, along with vocals by Moses Sumney and Sharon Van Etten. Today, we get to hear the gorgeous rendition of Youngs’ “A Fullness Of Light In Your Soul” featuring Perfume Genius.

Bloomington, Indiana indie label Jagjaguwar has been celebrating its 25th anniversary with a bunch of great musical surprises like Bon Iver’s collaboration with poet Ross Gay. The latest is this new cover of Richard Youngs’ “A Fullness Of Light In Your Soul,” performed by Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and Perfume Genius. It comes from This Is A Mindfulness Drill, a full tribute album to Youngs’ album Sapphie. The album also features Sharon Van Etten and Moses Sumney, who shows up on the previously released “It Will Be Fire.”

The new Wasserman Music agency and livestreaming service Twitch have partnered to launch “There is Light,” an indie-centric channel and concert series. The series will present 20 live concerts from independent music venues in the U.S. and U.K., starting with a May 4 — tonight — performance by Perfume Genius at the Lodge Room in Los Angeles. Other confirmed headliners include Best Coast, Cautious Clay, Creeper, Jade Bird, JpegMafia, Orla Gartland, Porches, The Snuts, and Two Feet, with more to be announced. All performances are “100% live” and free to view exclusively at https://www.twitch.tv/thereislight.

Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, Mike Hadreas’ fifth album as Perfume Genius, doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for improvement. Hadreas crafts songs with an incandescent glow, bubbling with the sugary pulse of the very best pop music, but also rich with vulnerability if you crack them open and examine their core. Set My Heart makes big, bold musical decisions, in no small part because it seems purposeful every step of the way.

In its original form, Perfume Genius’ “Describe” was a feedback-charred rock song. Mike Hadreas had summoned a dense glut of heavy harmonic noise to represent the kind of depression that makes you forget what happiness feels like. As the lead single from Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, it was a hell of an introduction to this latest era of Perfume Genius.

Perfume Genius, Foo Fighters, and Benjamin Gibbard are set to appear on Viva Vera 20!, a livestream special celebrating the 20th anniversary of the first show at Seattle’s Vera Project. The show will be broadcast on VeraTV.org on Wednesday, January 27, at 7 p.m. Pacific and feature additional performances and birthday wishes from TV on the Radio, Jeff Rosenstock, No Age, Tacocat, Mike Park, and more.