After Youth Lagoon gained steam online, Trevor Powers landed a record deal at the venerable Fat Possum Records, at which point he dropped out of college and quit his job to pursue music full-time. His album, The Year of Hibernation, captures desolation in its purest sonic form: Many of the songs are about people and days long gone, and even though Powers is only in his early twenties, he sings about being nine and seventeen in two separate songs, focusing on these anecdotes as though he were analyzing key moments in a life that's almost over. Even when he's not being so specific about the past, the reverberations seem to linger in his lyrics, bolstered by his fragile, far-off vocals, a careful, melodic pitter-patter of washed-out synths, and unfinished, hollow-sounding production.