Fleet Foxes have just posted four new songs on their MySpace. Get ‘em while they’re hot.

They reveal the band’s continued infatuations: the Beach Boys, crash cymbals, reverb, nature and natural things, ethereal harmonies, childhood memories that may or may not be true. This is beautiful stuff, weirdly pastoral and wintery. File these new songs between Jim James’ solo material and Midlake—more fleshed-out than the former, less analog-electric than the latter. The songwriting on tracks like “Blue Ridge Mountains” and “Ragged Wood”—the upcoming album’s namesake—is at once familiar and invigorating, all gilded vocals and shuffling drums. “Red Squirrel Sunrise” and “Oliver James” are sparser, just guitar and voices, folky and intimate.

I’d take Robin Pecknold’s majestic croon over Ben Bridwell’s nasal yelp any day—vocally, the similarity is definitely there, though BOH rock far harder that the Foxes. More than Band of Horses or Midlake we have My Morning Jacket to thank for this pastoral rock resurgence, and if you want to take it even further back, it’s all about Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood Mac. I had to type that a few times to believe it.