SVIIB stands as New York group School of Seven Bells’ final album, an impressive and emotional punctuation to the end of a four-record career. The songs were written primarily in the summer of 2012, several months before singer, guitarist and Secret Machines alum Benjamin Curtis died of lymphoma. Curtis’ bandmate Alejandra Deheza finished the music in 2014 with producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen, and it’s important that she did. The tracks here are lush and beautiful, carried by Deheza’s ethereal croon andsoaring instrumentals and synth parts. The singer has called the album a “love letter from start to finish,” and that sentiment resonates throughout, both in its lyrics and in its careful execution. SVIIB is possibly School of Seven Bells’ best work, from the glowing ambience of “On My Heart” to the propulsive glitter of “A Thousand Times More.” It’s impossible to know what Curtis contributed and what Deheza and Meldal-Johnsen continued, but it’s nice to imagine the album like an exquisite corpse drawing, each artist’s part seamlessly melding into the others’. “Now I can’t promise anything,” Deheza sings on “A Thousand Times More,” “except to say this hurt will pass.” With that thought—and the rest of the album—the musician reminds us that music is the essential instrument of healing.