Everything is haunted.

Horror movie logic dictates that a death makes the haunting, a blood soaked basement, an insane asylum, take your pick. But the places most filled with death are also the most peaceful—within nature. The peat bog doesn’t exist without the passing of uncounted critters, trees can’t grow without corpses below them. The pact between death and life is stronger than we could imagine, it is only our own discomfort at their entwining reality that makes us uneasy. And that unease and unbreakable pact are at the center of Keeper of the Shepherd. A masterful meditation on grief and passing, Hannah Frances’ newest album is as marvelously beautiful as it is ambitious. We talked to her below.