Karen Peris

The first album from The Innocence Mission in five years, Midwinter Swimmers sounds immediately like an old friend. At the same time it feels like a new kind of adventure for the beloved Pennsylvania band of high school friends Karen Peris, Don Peris, and Mike Bitts, having both an expansive, cinematic quality and a lo fi, strange beauty of a newly discovered vintage folk pop album. Early reviews have called Midwinter Swimmers a truly special album, linking it especially with Befriended, the band's classic LP from 2003. Songwriter Karen Peris looks closely at every day moments as miraculous worlds of their own, with a particular sense of place and detail, as a way of joining in a conversation with other people about universal experiences of change and loss, and of love, hope and gratitude.

Beloved Pennsylvania band The Innocence Mission, led by Karen and Don Peris, return with the exquisite and touching album See You Tomorrow. First track The Brothers Williams Said with Karen's stunning, heart-aching voice and a lyric both moving and profound, speaks to the sense of misunderstanding or labelling that can happen to people who have a quiet nature. Simon Raymonde of the Cocteau Twins calls the arrangements on See You Tomorrow "massively special- the beauty, the way the album builds to it's' striking finale in I Would Be There is bewilderingly lovely." See You Tomorrow touches on the major changes that happen in the life of a family, and the "intense desire to hold the present moment of togetherness". Sufjan Stevens has called their music "moving and profound. What is so remarkable about Karen Peris' lyrics are the economy of words, concrete nouns which come to life with melody."