The first studio album from the innocence mission in four years, Midwinter Swimmers sounds immediately like an old friend. At the same time, it's a new kind of adventure for the beloved Pennsylvania band of high school friends Karen Peris, Don Peris, and Mike Bitts.

The album has both an expansive, cinematic quality and the strange, lo-fi beauty of a newly discovered vintage folk album. "It's like it was recorded at Western Electric in the 60's, and makes me think of Vashti Bunyan or Sibylle Baier, but also has these emotional bursts of orchestration and drums and harmony coming in - the sound of the innocence mission never stops getting richer," writes one early listener and friend.