The Lumineers

Schultz and Fraites developed their partnership before moving to Denver, where the project found a new musical setting. Cellist Neyla Pekarek became part of the early group, and the self-titled debut appeared in 2012. Ho Hey became the main introduction, with Stubborn Love revealing another side of the same combination of acoustic texture, rhythmic insistence and an exposed lead voice.

The records could sound communal without making the lyric entirely cheerful. Schultz's delivery often retained a dry, strained edge, giving a repeated chorus something less settled beneath its surface. The arrangements left individual instrumental gestures clearly audible, so the music could grow in size without requiring a thick layer of production to establish its emotional weight.

Cleopatra followed in 2016, including Ophelia, Sleep on the Floor and Angela. The songs gave the characters and their situations more room, while the piano and instrumental textures broadened the band's setting. The title track made a person's remembered choices central to the record's emotional world, with the melody helping the story move without rushing past its regret.

III arrived in 2019, organising its songs around an imagined family and the effects of addiction across generations. The structure extended an instinct already present in the earlier material: a song could make a particular person recognisable through a few carefully chosen details. The larger concept gave those scenes consequences beyond one chorus, allowing the music's familiar immediacy to support a story that continued after an individual track had ended.