While working out his follow up to 2012’s wonderful, I Know What Love Isn’t, Swedish crooner/ThunderPenguin fave, Jens Lekman has been quietly releasing a new track every week on SoundCloud. Don’t let the paltry play numbers (most average around 6-10k streams) or the lack of blog love fool you, there is real magic in the 21 diverse songs released so far. Some are fully realized compositions, while some are skeletal sketches. Either way, it’s a fascinating set from a versatile songwriter whose only constraint is time, freeing him to dig deeper into disparate influences and half-baked ideas. Here are my five favorites to date.

“Postcard #7” (02.14.15)
One of the finest pieces of Lekman’s career, “Postcard #7” is a swooning affirmation that sees the perpetually romantic 34 year-old falling all over himself in the early days of a love affair. Metaphors are generally tricky to pull off and often ring hollow, but he delivers his words with a disarming, palpable earnestness that will leave you sipping on the sweet nectar (buh doom pish) of your most naive, lovedrunk moments. Pour me another.

“Postcard #17” (04.25.15)
Lekman’s always had a way with samples, and many of his best tracks (“Rocky Dennis’ Farewell Song,” “Maple Leaves”) draw heavily from recontextualized obscure disco and pop songs of the 60’s and 70’s. He goes to that well again here, grabbing a few languid piano bars from jazz demigod Charles Mingus’ lovely “Myself When I’m Real.” Lekman’s melancholic vocals are well-suited for the chopped up piano chords and forlorn horns, and the deft arrangement allows plenty of space for the Gothenburg native to glide into.

“Postcard #10” (03.07.15)
In my experiences with loss, I’ve found that I miss the small stuff about a person more than the bigger, more profound moments I’d shared with them. I tend to especially miss things like stupid jokes, discussing trash TV, and G-Chatting about God knows what, and Lekman captures the power of the minutiae that fills our lives with a rumination on his late grandfather. Borrowing its melody from the series’ jokey opener, “Postcard #10” memorializes him with the kind of affecting Christmas story that everybody can relate to.

“Postcard #6” (02.07.15)
“Remember… I gave you a chart for morse code,” is one of the most Lekman-y opening lines of all time. While it may make little sense at first listen, it draws you in. And Lekman — ever the expert storyteller — pays it off with an emotive tale about moving on and letting go. Sporting swirling synths, jazzy piano, and dramatic strings, the lush arrangement shows that these are developed, fully formed pieces, far from the throwaways that their fanfare-free release would suggest.

“Postcard #21” (05.24.15)
We’ll end this list with the most recent track, a cut that recalls some of Lekman’s early, lo-fi, vocal-driven work like “Do You Remember The Riots?,” “A Man Walks Into a Bar,” and “The Cold Swedish Winter.” The latter is the first Jens song I ever heard and began my love affair with his music. There was a homemade feeling to that early work — like he was in your living room, singing without a microphone. Fittingly, he’s currently on tour, playing living rooms and community centers in tiny towns in Sweden and Norway. No doubt, he’ll be leaving fans with intimate memories like the one I have of him playing for 10 to 15 of us in a parking lot after a gig in San Francisco. I have a lot of rich memories involving his music, but that’s the one I cherish most.