The second album from North Carolina chamber-pop collective Lost in the Trees opens on a note of uncertainty, a far-off piano playing a chilling minor chord. It's a good indication of what's to come. Over the course of a dozen songs, frontman Ari Picker tries to make sense of his mother's suicide against a backdrop of rich orchestration, piled generously atop a base of delicate acoustic folk like heaping spoonfuls of vanilla frosting. Given the subject matter, it's no surprise that the mood is grim; buried deep within the swirling layers of strings, Picker's desperate falsetto sounds like a boy crying for help from within a blizzard. The result is songs suited less for a rock club than a church sanctuary, with Picker playing the forlorn choirboy.

Listen To Lost in the Trees' "Red":

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• Photos: Random Notes

“Karma Chameleon”

Boy George has said this song was about standing by what you believe in. However, at the time, he was involved in a secret affair with Culture Club drummer Jon Moss. "Now people can understand the songs better," he said. "They were written about my relationship with Jon, and they were also written about being a gay man in a homophobic world." The lines "If I listen to your lies, would you say/I'm a man without conviction/I'm a man who doesn't know how to sell a contradiction," described his life at the time, he said. "I was selling this big lie."