Oh! Pears is the brainchild of Philadelphia’s Corey Duncan, a thrilling new voice whose work draws equally from the worlds of indie-pop (Beirut, Grizzly Bear) and classical composition (Ravel, Tchaikovsky) to create enchanting songs with transformative power.

Fill Your Lungs finds Duncan exploring a sound a lifetime in the making; setting stunning orchestral arrangements drawn from his family’s long lineage of classical musicians to urgent, three-minute perfect pop nuggets not far removed from the stylings of his previous outfit, Pattern Is Movement. It’s an engrossing sound that places Duncan at the forefront of a class of high-minded American songwriters like Van Dyke Parks and Jeremy Enigk.

The songs on Oh! Pears’ debut Fill Your Lungs EP deal with startlingly personal themes; “Singers” is about Duncan and his brother forging their own identities amid intense Catholicism. “The Hall” touches on a relative’s gradual loss of sight, and how he learns to adjust his life to the change. “A lot of these songs, really, are identity songs,” Duncan says. “Who my family is, who my friends are.” Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.