Breathe Owl Breathe is comprised of Micah Middaugh, Andréa Moreno-Beals and Trevor Hobbs. It’s been nearly a decade since Breathe Owl Breathe began making music in a remote cabin tucked away in a Northern Michigan river valley. Crafted over a two-year period in various homes and studios between the West Coast and Midwest, "Passage of Pegasus", their sixth album and follow-up to 2010’s Magic Central, marks an evolution. The songwriting has grown and the compositions are more textured. Each song is like a little diorama, constructed with engaging imagery, beautiful harmonies and lush instrumentation. For the first time ever, Breathe Owl Breathe employed contributions from artists such as Michael Hurley, Jim Becker (Califone, Iron & Wine), Victoria Williams, Kyle Field (Little Wings) and Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats, The Shins), who produced the album. The stories and sentiments on "Passage of Pegasus" feel like a peek into the personal folklore of frontman and lyricist Micah Middaugh, whose broken baritone delivers each line with heart-on-sleeve sincerity. “Emptiness, you are dismissed,” he commands in the album’s opening line, from “Vision Quest”—a cinematic, forward-propelling track whose title is a hint at the kind of journey the album delivers. Throughout the album, characters swoop in and out as they navigate a range of emotional and physical landscapes that come alive with cellist Andréa Moreno-Beals’ brilliant string arrangements and the sensitive work of percussionist and keyboardist Trevor Hobbs. Some of these songs are hopeful, others heartbreaking; by the time the lingering ethereal notes of “Two Moths,” the final track, fade out, the listener can’t help but feel comfortably carried beyond the abyss. "Passage of Pegasus" looks and feels as handmade as possible – each album cover is a unique, individually numbered piece of art, pressed with handset type and copper-block images crafted by Micah at his print making studio Cavern Lantern Wonder Welding. Two other Michigan printing luminaries, Chad Pastonik of Deep Wood Press and George Wietor of Issue Press, both oriented toward different printmaking aesthetics, also lent their hands to bring Micah’s artistic perspective to fruition. This album marks a turning point for Breathe Owl Breathe. Micah, Andréa and Trevor have matured individually as artists, honed their collective vision, and deepened their connection to that which inspires them to create. They’ve firmly taken the reins in determining their own destiny as collaborators: booking their own concerts in unexpected locations, releasing the album without the assistance of a label, guiding every step of the process with their own hands. The result of this determined independence is a bright new body of work that feels fresh and yet familiar. Longtime fans will be delighted, and new ones will no doubt continue to fall for the magic that is Breathe Owl Breathe.