Photo by Jeremiah Matos

Every week, we’re here to remind you of the Boston artists we love and think you oughta know.

Gabe Jasper thinks they need to read more books. Staring at a shelf stacked with works by Kurt Vonnegut, Jonathan Lethem, and David Sedaris, they note that they’ve yet to read any of them.

The allure of auteur novels — often a lonely pursuit for both author and reader — seems obvious for Jasper, who records music as bark dog, given that they choose to work alone almost exclusively. “Music for me has always been a very solitary thing,” Jasper says. This is a big statement for someone whose early creative pursuits included theater and improv comedy, two modes of performance that are perhaps the most reliant on other people. 

Musically, Jasper veers toward the auteur as well. They freely quote Jeff Mangum and sing the praises of Panda Bear and Phil Elverum. A Bandcamp comment on one of their early EPs reads, “Comparable to Rules by Alex G in a lot of ways.” But Jasper doesn’t shy away from the comparison; they embrace it. They’ve uploaded a cover of Alex G’s “Change” to their SoundCloud and cite him as a key influence. 

The comparison to the Philadelphia DIY hero isn’t completely warrantless: both have a tendency to include seemingly disparate sonic ideas on the same album, preferring to find cohesion in mood and low-fi earnestness rather than genre. On their latest EP waterways, you’ll find Jasper alternating between woozy electro-pop, slacker rock, and hip hop. The EP plays like a frantic flip through an old AM radio player, and the DJ on every station has the same sense of paralyzing unease.

Check out the waterways EP below and follow bark dog on Twitter and Facebook.