Sam Beam hasn’t altered the concept of Iron & Wine all that much since he launched the project in the early 2000s: lo-fi, acoustic-based tunes; breathy, Nick Drake-ian vocals and sunny harmonies; carefully tailored, evocative stories that enchant; and rootsy, often minimalist accompaniment characterize Beam’s work under his chosen nom-de-indie. And why should he tinker with such a reliably good thing? Iron & Wine’s music is what it is, and even when Beam steps out, turns up the tempo, kicks up the volume, adds an instrument or 10, the core characteristics are never too far away.

Hen’s Teeth—the phrase, which goes back a couple of hundred years, describes something that simply doesn’t exist but maybe should—is something of a companion piece to its predecessor; consider it the belatedly released second half of a two-LP set if you will. But not always. Recorded at the same sessions that gave us 2024’s Light Verse, mostly using the same musicians, it finds Beam going deep, getting mystical, ruminating, but also having a giggle.

The rhythm propelling “In Your Ocean,” the first single, is insistently upbeat, with slide guitar providing the warmth, despite a tagline that minces no words: “Praying for dry ground/ Though I only want to drown/ When I find myself swimming in your ocean.” But then there’s “Robin’s Egg,” one of two collaborations with the I’m With Her trio. As effervescent as a Mamas and the Papas hit, it’s a different take on the oldest song topic of all: “We did it for love when that’s what it was/ If that’s what it was/ Whatever it was.” And yeah, a title like “Dates and Dead People” sounds a bit portentous, but it’s hard to get too creeped out over something as pretty as this, especially when it contains the word “oh” more than two hundred times.