Into The Mystery

Like so many other more-or-less homebound artists, South Carolina’s NEEDTOBREATHE made the most of the pandemic, creatively speaking. Following 2020’s Out of Body and 2021’s Live From the Woods, Vol. 2 (which they recorded at socially distanced outdoor concerts in Tennessee), Into the Mystery, their eighth album and second since founding member Bo Rinehart departed, continues the band’s wondrous and wide-eyed exploration of what it means to be human—and how that shifts within one’s faith system. Swelling, string-led ballads (“Don’t Throw All the Good Things Away” with Natalie Hemby), starry-skied epics (“I Am Yours”), upbeat folk-pop ditties (the Carrie Underwood-guesting “I Wanna Remember”)—these songs keep God at their center, but as the album title suggests, there’s a pervading sense of searching that’s always guiding the band’s broader philosophy. Or, as Bear Rinehart puts it on “Sunshine,” “I hope we're asking questions till the day that we die.”