There’s been a lot of talk about the decline in quality “indie” music since the grand output of 2009, but honestly we’re not all that interested in that kind of talk… especially with Local Natives’ Hummingbird LP on our minds. The Los Angeles-based band broke onto the scene in 2009 with the impressively cohesive Gorilla Manner and immediately garnered an impressive fan base via their oddly harmonic compositions. Four years later and the band is releasing their second album and based on a first listen, it sees the group striving for a more expansive sound. The first half of Hummingbird is decidedly upbeat, while the second half features a lot of sad piano weak that heavily features vocalist Taylor Rice’s range. This dichotomy isn’t totally consistent, but check out “Heavy Feet” and “Colombia” below for a prime example of how the album is devised. Hit the jump to stream the entirety of Hummingbird, which is out now on Frenchkiss/Infectious.

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