Editor's Note: This article was originally published on Oct. 17, 2024, and was updated on April 10, 2025 to reflect the release of Bon Iver's SABLE, fABLE.
In 2006, a solitary Justin Vernon, fresh off of a breakup and bedrest for pneumonia, mononucleosis and a resulting liver infection, retreated to his father's cabin in Wisconsin. On the secluded, 80-acre plot in the woods, he single-handedly wrote, recorded and produced an album that is today regarded as indie canon: For Emma, Forever Ago.
Bon Iver's arc from an obscure, one-man outfit to an indie music culture-shifter began with the 2007 LP. The project — and especially its lead single, "Skinny Love" — carved Vernon's niche in the music industry, vaulting him from a hardscrabble singer/songwriter struggling to find his place to a forward-thinking artist capable of earning critics' high marks. Its barebones production, decisive lack of polish, raw vocals, abstract lyricism, and unconventional song structures yielded a new strand of folk — one that set the stage for the success of acts like Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers.
The years that followed For Emma, Forever Ago brought change for both the indie landscape and the band. Bon Iver gradually evolved from Vernon's solo effort to a coterie of creators, with Vernon at its center. He went on to write nearly all of their eponymous sophomore album alone, but involved collaborators to perform and record the 2011 LP. Bon Iver, Bon Iver further cemented its namesake's influence, netting Vernon and his counterparts their first GRAMMYs, for Best Alternative Music Album and Best New Artist, in 2012.
Following its release, Vernon announced that the band would go on a hiatus that continued from 2012 through 2014. Their extended break was punctuated by brief flashes of activity, including 2014's "Heavenly Father," from the soundtrack of Zach Braff's film, Wish I Was Here; in 2015, Bon Iver briefly emerged from elusivity to play the Eaux Claires Music Festival in Vernon's native Wisconsin, where they debuted "666 ʇ." The song would eventually land on the glitchy, electronic-leaning 22, A Million, Bon Iver's 2016 return that presented a sharp sonic deviation. Three years later, the band returned to its warm folk custom on 2019's i,i.
In recent years, Bon Iver — whose discography has largely favored full-length albums — began to lean more heavily into singles and one-off collaborations. A series of meet-ups with mainstream pop and country acts, including Taylor Swift (on "exile," from folklore, the 2021 Album Of The Year GRAMMY Award winner), Zach Bryan (2023's "Boys Of Faith"), and Charli xcx ("I think about it all the time," which arrived in October), raised Bon Iver's profile beyond indie circles, broadening the band's reach and boosting its appeal beyond its devoted but niche audience.
Those cross-genre collaborations comprise a chapter that ranks as Bon Iver's most experimental and modern juncture in their career yet. But with SABLE, — their first project since i,i — Bon Iver pivoted again.
The EP landed in October 2024 via their longtime label, Jagjaguwar, as a "reset and reintroduction" intended to "strip the [Bon Iver] project down to the primary elements on which it was originally founded," according to a press release. This return to form was led by "S P E Y S I D E," the sole preview from SABLE,; Its minimalistic production and sentimentality evoke For Emma, Forever Ago, recalling a simpler time when Bon Iver was just a man in a cabin in Wisconsin.
Yet with SABLE, fABLE, Bon Iver move beyond this isolated, quintessential image, sonically and thematically offering a new vantage point on their music. In February, Vernon announced that the EP would evolve into a full-fledged studio album — Bon Iver's first in five years.
"SABLE, was the prologue, a controlled burn clearing the way for new possibilities. fABLE is the book. Stories of introduction and celebration. The fresh growth that blankets the charred ground. Whereas SABLE, was a work of solitude, fABLE is an outstretched hand," reads a description of the vinyl LP for sale on Bon Iver's Bandcamp.
Ahead of the album, GRAMMY.com revisits six songs that broadly characterize Bon Iver's sound — and ultimately helped them become one of the most influential indie acts of the 2000s.
Born from the period of isolation and quietude that became an inflection point in Vernon's personal life and career, "Blindsided" is arguably one of the strongest examples of Bon Iver's singular brand of songwriting. Lines like "I crouch like a crow/ Contrasting the snow" and "Taut line/ Down to the shoreline/ The end of a bloodline/ The moon is a cold light" powerfully embody Bon Iver's lyrical signature — visceral imagery and wistful, often existential sentiments packaged in poignant poeticisms.
Though Vernon has said that the indie-folk ballad narrates his and his friend's attempt to break into the RCU building in downtown Eau Claire, Wisc., the song's abstract lyrics leave space for listeners to form their own interpretations of its significance, amplifying its resonance. Over the years, fans have postulated that "Blindsided" and its piercing hook, "Would you really rush out? (For me now)," can extend far beyond its literal meaning to apply to the discovery of infidelity and bouts of depression.
Sonically, its sparse production trains the focus on Vernon's soft, melancholy falsettos, reinforcing a reality key to Bon Iver's discography: the band has always been able to do a lot with a little.
Replete with lush instrumentation and rich soundscapes, Bon Iver was a departure from the unadorned acoustic character of For Emma, Forever Ago that demonstrated Vernon's range in a more refined framework. Of the 10 songs on their concise yet intricate sophomore album, "Holocene" best embodies this sonic shift. The gentle undulation of its instrumentation adds a new sense of depth and dimension to Bon Iver's sound that wasn't present on Vernon's raw, unvarnished debut LP.
But while "Holocene" expands Bon Iver's sonic fingerprint, lyrically, it continues their tradition of confronting aspects of the human condition.
"It's partly named after the [geological] era, but it's also the name of a bar in Portland where I had a dark night of the soul," Vernon once told Mojo Magazine, according to The Alternative. "The title is a metaphor for when you're not doing well. But it's also a song about redemption and realizing that you're worth something; that you're special and not special at the same time."
On their third studio album, Bon Iver infused their folk identity with glitchy, electronic sensibilities. This controversial creative choice invited critiques from fans and critics alike, who questioned the band's withdrawal from its familiar and established formula. But while 22, A Million felt detached from the sound of For Emma, Forever Ago and Bon Iver, Bon Iver, it also demonstrated their willingness to experiment with an audacious new approach.
"21 MOON WATER" is one of the album's more fluid examples of the band's adoption of electronic elements. It builds with ethereal maximalism that yields to Vernon's distorted vocals, offering a completely different and more sonically manipulated look at Bon Iver's sound.
After taking a dramatic turn on 22, A Million, Bon Iver returned to folk form on their fourth studio album, i,i (2019). "Hey, Ma," the LP's lead single, is a microcosm of this sonic retracing of steps. The folk-pop number retains the wistful melancholy that, by this point, had become one of Bon Iver's stylistic hallmarks, but does so in a melodic, easy-listening manner with sing-along appeal. In this regard, "Hey, Ma" emerges as one of the most accessible releases of the band's late 2010's run — a trait amplified by its rather relatable reminder: you should probably call your mother.
"Hey, Ma" also noticeably (and refreshingly) positions Vernon's vocals with a clarity largely absent from Bon Iver's earlier releases, adding a sense of novelty to the song and to i,i as a whole.
Throughout their career, Bon Iver have largely restricted their collaborative activity to their band members — a practice that has produced four albums, none of which feature another artist's name alongside theirs. Following i,i and the 10th-anniversary reissue of their Blood Bank EP in 2020, though, Bon Iver gradually began to gravitate towards collaborations, including 2023's "Boys Of Faith" with Zach Bryan, from the country phenom's EP of the same name.
Their rugged, indie-folk one-off reflects on enduring friendships while evidencing Bon Iver's and Bryan's musical synergy. The production is as much a full-circle moment for Bryan as it is a testament to Bon Iver's influence; the former is a longtime Bon Iver fan who previously covered "For Emma" and cited Vernon's band as a "generational act." The millennial's collaboration with 43-year-old Vernon deepens Bon Iver's status as such, exposing their artistry to a new generation.
With SABLE, their release most closely aligned to For Emma, Forever Ago in years, Bon Iver have the opportunity to repeat history in this expanded pool of listeners, with whom their soul-stirring music may resonate for years to come — just like their debut LP did 17 years ago.
Of the trio of SABLE, fABLE pre-album singles, "Walk Home" most overtly illustrates fABLE's antithesis to SABLE's solitude. It makes sense, then, that Vernon describes the smoldering, R&B-adjacent number as "a romp where you can't wait to pull your clothes off fast enough and jump inside bed with your one true love."
Inside the warm, heart-stoking world that Bon Iver builds on "Walk Home," candles flicker amid skin-to-skin (and soul-to-soul) connection as hours dwindle not in isolation but romantic company. Vernon's tender falsetto skates over weighty percussion, poetically articulating a sense of desire so strong that the world outside their two silhouettes has no choice but to wait.
Between its light, supple production and love-drunk lyrical confessions ("Of this I am certain of/ You was made for me), it's clear that on this latter half of SABLE, fABLE, Bon Iver — like the lovers in the song's bubble — have "let the light come in."