Latest Release
- MAR 19, 2025
- 1 Song
- Fleet Foxes · 2008
- Sun Giant - EP · 2008
- Don't Put It All On Me - Single · 2025
- Twelve Carat Toothache · 2022
- Helplessness Blues · 2011
- Fleet Foxes · 2008
- Fleet Foxes · 2008
- Fleet Foxes · 2008
- How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last? · 2021
- Fleet Foxes · 2008
Essential Albums
- Sub Pop, the same label that introduced the world to grunge, would turn around nearly two decades later and give us grunge’s placid antidote with Fleet Foxes’ transcendent self-titled debut album. The band’s baroque, bucolic indie folk couldn’t sound further away from the caffeinated buzz of Seattle—or any modern city for that matter. Instead, <I>Fleet Foxes</I> plants us in a woodsy, whimsical fairytale set sometime between the Renaissance (the album’s cover is a 1559 piece from Dutch painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder) and some distant sylvan future. The album opens at dawn with a playful a capella chant that leads into sweet Americana: “Sun risin’ over my head,” lead singer Robin Pecknold draws out hypnotically, his voice and guitar awash in reverb as warm as the sun soaking a wide-open field. The band builds from this beauty on “White Winter Hymnal,” with its echoing tom-toms enveloped in layered vocal harmonies that create an organic surround-sound feel, and the dynamic “Ragged Wood,” which pieces together shimmering strings for a spirited stop-and-go chase through the forest. The stunning wall-of-sound effect throughout—bolstered by instruments like the autoharp and Chinese zither and the quintet’s own sacred-harp singing—reaches its peak on “Heard Them Stirring,” a humming reverie that earning them Beach Boys comparisons without the need for lyrics. Still, just as the Bruegel cover reveals the devil’s in the details, darkness pervades the album: The hushed acoustic stunner “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” speaks of demons and deadly premonitions, while the flute-adorned “Your Protector” has us running with the devil at a heart-pounding pace. All of it—the earthly sounds and unearthly visions—linger long after, just like Pecknold’s final haunting howl on closer “Oliver James.”
Albums
Music Videos
- 2021
- 2020
- 2020
- 2017
Artist Playlists
- Rewriting the indie folk lexicon one harmony at a time.
- Sun-dappled, harmony-saturated pop from both sides of the pond.
Singles & EPs
- 2024
Live Albums
Compilations
About Fleet Foxes
Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold formed the indie folk group in high school, where he first started playing music with lead guitarist Skye Skjelset. ∙ Originally called Pineapple, the band was forced to rebrand as Fleet Foxes because another Seattle act, The Pineapples, had already claimed the fruit. ∙ “It was obvious [Pecknold] had talent coming out of his a**,” said producer Phil Ek (The Shins, Modest Mouse, Built to Spill), who helped the group record their 2006 self-titled EP. ∙ At 2008’s SXSW, Fleet Foxes wowed music critics, who compared them to The Beach Boys, Animal Collective, and Crosby, Stills & Nash. ∙ Their eponymous debut topped Pitchfork’s 50 Best Albums of 2008 list and made Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Albums of the Decade. ∙ 2011’s Helplessness Blues, the only Fleet Foxes album to feature Josh Tillman (aka Father John Misty), was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Folk Album. ∙ Following a three-year hiatus, they returned in 2017 with Crack-Up, which made the Top 10 of the Billboard 200, and their 2020 LP Shore also cracked the same chart.
- FROM
- Seattle, WA, United States
- FORMED
- 2006
- GENRE
- Alternative