Brooklyn's O'Death make Americana music that's as lyrically bleak and brooding as the band's name suggests. On their fourth LP, Outside, there's talk of dirty fields; cold, dark sweat; red eyes; bloody hands and weary feet; storms and floods; and long, black dresses. There are several contrasts of dark and light: In Outside's brief, soothing opener, "Bugs," frontman Greg Jamie sings, "I've been wastin' most my time living for the day/ When, like bugs, we figured out how to make light stay"; in the industrial waltz "Alamar," he talks about a woman wearing a light dress, who's "in flames by the sea."

The soundtrack fits, too: A fiddle swoops through stomps and claps in "Ghost Head"; "Black Dress" starts with eerie banjo harmonics; and "Pushing Out" is backed by a soft, stormy whooshing noise. O'Death's songs are an unlikely fusion of folk with punk, goth, metal and bluegrass, and though Outside is a bit musically tamer than 2008's Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin, it's only because the gloom and doom is more contained this time around.