Brooklyn-via-Mexico-City singer/songwriter Deby Medrez Pier depicts the final beauty of transience in her painterly songs. On the ukulele-cradled "The Last Time" (streaming below), for example, the musician conjures a sweetly fleeting seaside romance with a Hemingway-esque elegance while she conveys perhaps ephemeral personal frustration on the guitar-fuzzed "July." Beyond its sheer prettiness, most striking about Pier’s music is its ageless nature; these deeply felt, sparsely-constructed tracks may sound like they came from early twentieth-century Paris but they’re just as vital in twenty-first-century New York. Deby Medrez Pier plays tonight at The Mercury Lounge. – Zach Weg
