Hibou is a dream pop project from Peter Michel, a Seattle-based musician whose dichotomy of sun-dazed melancholia manifests itself in brightly melodic guitar riffs and wistful introspection. A sufferer of a dissociative disorder called depersonalization, Michel's condition results in a feeling of observing his own body from the outside. As harrowing as that sounds, it would be tough to find an artist whose strange personal circumstances were better represented by the type of music he makes. Following a hazy self-recorded 2015 set and a lusher full-band studio follow-up three years later, Michel returns with Halve, his third outing as Hibou. Retreating from the more collaborative approach of 2018's Something Familiar, the multi-instrumentalist once again takes complete creative control here, playing every note and mixing every track himself. The resulting ten songs are similar in style to the ethereal bedroom pop of his debut, but bear an overall more reflective tone and an almost obsessive sense of precision in their carefully interlocking layers and parts. Michel's ear for melody has always been keen and he imbues album highlights like "Silver" and "As Always" with plenty of crystalline guitar leads and tuneful hooks which rise above the mesmerizing production. Some songs, like the six-minute closer, "Flood," rely more heavily on synths and textural elements, landing somewhere between swelling shoegaze and dreamy synth pop. Michel's meditations on change, nostalgia, and loss rarely rise above a breathy whisper and, within his chosen palette of sounds, some of Halve tends to blur together in places. Still, Hibou's penchant for crafting layered, atmospheric pop that is easy on ears is as strong as ever.