Sometimes the smartest songwriting comes from not much writing at all. Sparse and sensitive, Horsegirl embodies brevity on their recent album, Phonetics On and On, ditching the full-length lines for childlike, non-lexical vocables and spacious pop arrangements to match. Since starting the band as a high school extracurricular in Chicago, Gigi Reece, Penelope Lowenstein, and Nora Cheng have left behind the overused Nineties alt-rock references of their recent past to reach for something even further back: their childhood, along with the unfeigned language that once naturally came with it. You can hear all about it in our online-only interview with Horsegirl, and at Parish this Saturday with Godcaster opening. – Levi Langley