Warner Bros.

Iron & Wine – aka the bearded bard Sam Beam – held onto his hushed, soft-singing indie-folk sensibilities for several years’ worth of albums and EPs. Then, with The Shepherd’s Dog, he started fleshing out his songs with understated Eastern and African flavors. Kiss Each Other Clean is not only Beam’s first major-label album – it’s a whole different animal. He’s still filling his lyrics with vivid, multi-layered imagery, but they seem less like private poetry now that he’s singing out and playing up the hooks. Along with the greater vocal volume, there are colorful new additions – like funky, left-of-center keyboards and sax – and brighter, crisper production all around. Beam’s given the music new vitality without dumbing it down.