On What Will We Be, his seventh album, Devendra Banhart walks a bizarre line between sophisticated psych-folk and the chance that – with a spiffy new major label contract and the occasional celebrity girlfriend – he may achieve heartthrob/figurehead status among a new generation of hippies. Developing his almost-outsider strumming into rich tropicalia-like changes, the 28-year-old songwriter produces a batch of sun-dappled mellowness that sounds alternately like a reggae-inflected Strokes ( “Baby,” “16th & Valencia” ) and a significantly more baked Paul Simon ( “Goin’ Back To the Place” ) without losing an ounce of Banhart’s playfully froggy vocals. There’s cosmic kitsch, to be sure ( “Chin Chin & Muck Muck” ), but Banhart stays on target: exquisite songwriting, gorgeous production. There’s no question mark in the album title, but the answer is probably “blissful.”