Grouper

A multi-instrumentalist, DIY-inclined producer who has issued the bulk of her solo work under the pseudonym Grouper, Harris secured more or less permanent critical-darling status with her 2008 breakthrough album, "Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill." Grouper’s music lends itself to precisely the kind of introverted presentation that Harris has been able to sustain since making her full-length CD-R debut in 2005. Though keyboards, piano, guitar and Harris’s own voice have always been central to her work, her trademark has been to engulf those sounds so the overall atmosphere — not so much the instrumentation — occupies the spotlight. On any given Grouper release, the clarity of the individual parts tends to get washed out in a thick blanket of whatever sonic element is most prominent in the mix, be it volume saturation, reverb, or other effects.