大盗贼

Big Thief is an American indie folk band formed in Brooklyn, New York, in 2015. The line-up comprises two founding members: vocalist-guitarist Adrianne Lenker and guitarist Buck Meek. Drummer James Krivchenia replaced founding drummer Jason Burger after the release of their debut album. Founding bassist Max Oleartchik left the band in June 2024, with Joshua Crumbly now playing bass for live performances.

Big Thief's debut album, Masterpiece, was released on Saddle Creek Records in 2016. Their second studio album, Capacity, was released in 2017. In 2019, the band signed to 4AD and released two studio albums: U.F.O.F. in May 2019 and Two Hands in October 2019. Both albums received critical acclaim; U.F.O.F. was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards, and the song "Not", was nominated for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards.

The band's fifth studio album, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, was released in February 2022. A double album, it reached the top ten in the Netherlands and was also nominated for Best Alternative Music Album at the 2023 Grammys, while its second single "Certainty" was nominated for Best Alternative Music Performance. Oleartchik ended his nine-year stint with Big Thief in June 2024, with the band citing "interpersonal reasons" for the departure.

In September 2025, the band released its first album as a trio, Double Infinity, which was recorded with the participation of several session musicians. Following the album's release, the band added Joshua Crumbly to their live line-up.

History

2013–2015: Early years

Adrianne Lenker met Buck Meek at a show in Boston, and after meeting him again in Brooklyn as undergraduates, the pair began performing as a duo. They toured as a duo in 2013, and released two EPs, a-sides and b-sides, in 2014. In 2015, after performing for two years and developing a small grassroots following, they began looking for additional members to accompany them, and formed the band Big Thief with drummer Jason Burger and Max Oleartchik, a bassist and longtime friend of Meek's. James Krivchenia joined the band later, originally as a sound engineer and then replacing Burger as the drummer. All four members of Big Thief attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.

2016–2018: Masterpiece and Capacity

The band's debut studio album, Masterpiece was released on Saddle Creek Records on May 27, 2016. It received generally favorable reviews from critics; it has a rating of 79/100 on Metacritic. Bob Boilen from NPR wrote that Big Thief was "a band bound by great songs," and called the title track, Masterpiece, "one of the best songs I've heard this year." Jillian Mapes, writing for Pitchfork, gave Masterpiece a rating of 7.7 out of 10 saying the songs on the album "sound cherry-picked over a lifetime of writing". Robert Christgau described the album's songs as being "fragile, noisy images of a love perpetually out of reach". Ben Salmon wrote in the Portland Mercury that on the album Big Thief "alternately sounds like an unearthed field recording ("Little Arrow"), a pop band with a broken heart's pulse ("Vegas"), and a classic, buzzy indie-rock outfit ("Interstate")."

On April 4, 2017, Big Thief premiered a new single "Mythological Beauty" on NPR. The next day the band released the single's official video and confirmed that the song would appear on their second studio album, Capacity. The full album was released on June 9 via Saddle Creek. Capacity received critical acclaim upon its release. On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from music critics, the album received an average score of 81 indicating "universal acclaim" based on 15 reviews.

Capacity appeared on multiple album-of-the-year lists, including No. 1 on NPR's "Bob Boilen's Top Ten Album's of 2017". Boilen said, "I don't recall the last time I had the same band in my top five albums for two years in a row. But this year's Capacity (my No. 1 album) and last year's Masterpiece (my No. 4 album) did just that." Spin named Capacity No. 2 on their "50 Best Albums of 2017", citing the band's "open engagement with anguish in their bracing songs." The song "Mary" appeared on Pitchfork's 200 Best Songs of the 2010s list, at No. 44.