Dirty Projectors, “Stillness is the Move.”

More and more, Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca is feeling like something special: Weird as hell, but also artful and effortless and abundant with joy. It is a record absolutely meant to be heard as an album, from “Cannibal Resource” down to “Fluorescent Half Dome,” but if you need to hear a single you could well start here. “Stillness is the Move” sounded cloying to me until someone suggested it was actually an R&B song, the sort of thing Beyonce might sing if she went to Yale with DPs frontman Dave Longstreth. Like so much modern R&B, it’s built around a repeating, chiming figure that the vocal mostly ignores. Keep an open mind — the same kind of open mind you needed to love “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It),” which was built on what sounded like a Frogger sample — and you may fall hard for it. This is an indie rock song that could have been written for Amerie.

I guess what I want to tell you about Bitte Orca is that it’s sui generis in a way that very few records are. Critics are falling all over themselves in an effort to define it, which is usually a good sign. In its strange song structures, it recalls Yankee Hotel Foxtrot; in its deeply felt yet obtuse lyrics, it suggests Neutral Milk Hotel. I hesitate to make those comparisons, knowing the expectations they raise. But references feel on point. Whatever you think of Bitte Orca, the album makes a strong impression. More than anything I’ve heard this year, it feels like the album we all should be talking about.