“What is left when unhungry?,” Justin Vernon sings midway through “22, a Million,” his third album as Bon Iver. It’s one of many questions this 35-year-old songwriter and multi-instrumentalist...

Christians see an echo of Jesus in the way the leaf must first die and fall before we get to the resurrected buds of spring. With 22, A Million, Bon Iver similarly shows us how change is a necessary progression forward. The man behind Bon Iver, Justin Vernon, has made a significant departure from the two previous albums.

Much like David in Psalm 8, Justin Vernon’s latest release expresses poetic awe at the miracle of being alive. “How strange it is to be anything at all,” Neutral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Mangum croons on his band’s signature anthem, “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.”

On “Faith,” Bon Iver chart a deeply considered intimacy. In the sounds of individual words—the way they’re cobbled together, or laced with distortion—Vernon refines his approach to ...

Bon Iver. For Emma, Forever Ago —the debut from Justin Vernon’s Bon Iver—grew from a self-released album recorded in a Wisconsin hunting cabin to an indie-folk behemoth. Vernon’s rustic ...