On graves, the first release on their own label The Fellowship, Purity Ring's Corin Roddick and Megan James are free to do whatever they want -- but instead of using that freedom to make something challenging or dense, they do the opposite. The duo lift the foggy textures that dominated Womb in favor of spacious, crystalline productions and an overall feeling of lightness. Though Purity Ring's music is normally wintry to the point of permafrost, there's a surprisingly sunny quality to the EP as a whole and its title track in particular. With its sugary keyboard hook and James' even sweeter vocals, "graves"' clear-skied pop makes for a remarkably cheery-sounding memento mori. Even when things get darker, as on the moodily catchy "unlucky" or "nthngsfine," which finds James longing for summer to end over warm, Boards of Canada-like synth textures, Purity Ring never sound weighted down. The album's wide-open sound allows the pair to experiment by adding more organic touches like the delicate piano sprinkled through "xsalt" or the reverberating acoustic guitar on "neverend," but it also lets Roddick and James showcase their songwriting chops with the flirtatious longing of "soshy" and "watersong," two of their most tightly written tracks to date. Where Womb felt like the closing of a chapter, graves feels like a promising rebirth for Purity Ring. ~ Heather Phares, Rovi