Flavorwire

It’s the middle of the year, which means it’s time for the music industry’s first round of 2012 listomania — and lo, the first “best of 2012 so far” roundups have already begun to crop up across the Internet. It’s been pleasing to see that some of our favorite albums have had plenty of love on such lists — we’re sure you don’t need us to tell you any more about the likes of Lower Dens, Chromatics, Liars, Death Grips, Leonard Cohen or, of course, Grimes, who may well actually rule the entire world by the end of this year. But there are others that we haven’t been seeing mentioned a whole lot, and thus we figured we’d repeat the feature we did at about this time last year, focusing on albums that everyone seems to have overlooked so far in 2012. We suggest you catch up ASAP, as December’s coming sooner than you think.

Mirroring — Foreign Body

It might be the largely un-Googleable band name, or just that like the solo work of its two protagonists — Grouper’s Liz Harris and Tiny Vipers’ Jesy Fortino — Mirroring’s music has subtle charms that only reveal themselves with repeated, careful listening. Whatever the reason, this excellent collaboration between two of our favorite artists has been largely absent from pretty much every Best of 2012 So Far list we’ve looked at, which is a shame, because it’s beautiful, striking a perfect balance between Harris’s atmospheric drones and Fortino’s acoustic guitar and delicate voice.