A dark winter's night swirls around you as you walk past an endless line of car headlights waiting to be shuffled into order at the busy junction ahead. It’s the end of the week and whilst a part of you wants to be home, the other part is willing to linger a while longer, as through your headphones the pure, fragile voice of Laura Veirs is singing a lullaby just for you.It was August of 2005 that her last album Year of Meteors came out and though I didn’t really discover it until that December, it is an album that has stayed with me ever since, that I know intimately now, trying to play it to anyone else who will listen. I think my campaign to bring Laura Veirs to the world has taken a big step forward today. Last night I switched on my radio in order to set the alarm and what was playing on 6Music? A new Laura Veirs track, one off an album that has snook up on me completely unexpectedly, and one that already sounds brilliant.Since Year of Meteors Laura has been busy, not only touring with the band The Saltbreakers which formerly went under the moniker The Tortured Souls, but also dueting with Colin Meloy on The Decemberists’ Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then), a gorgeous track off of The Crane Wife which was co-produced by Tucker Martine, Laura’s drummer and producer.The new album, titled Saltbreakers, sounds to me (from the couple of tracks I’ve heard) like a powerful and positive step forward for Laura. Where Meteors was like wondering through a back-street bric-a-brac shop, stumbling across wonderful, beautiful and unexpected things, Saltbreakers speaks of consistency and quality throughout. The fuller sound provided by the Saltbreakers compliments Laura’s voice and her lyrics are still wistful, yearning for a better, brighter world, almost childlike in its lack of surface complexities, and yet at the same time subtle, soulful and scarily deep.In an interview on the subject of the title Saltbreakers she has said it relates to the sea and the waves: “the sea itself is so mysterious, ineffable, infinite. You can never know completely what’s going on under the surface. Waves, of course, can wash things away, absolve you, clear the beach of detritus, or they can bring a bunch of stuff back in”.I am so much looking forward to the release of this album. Suddenly the Arcade Fire aren’t looking so comfortable on that top spot. It should be released on the 26th March on Nonesuch Records.Check out a tune: