On the night of the Fourth of July, fireworks over Mei Semones' Brooklyn block were competing with something more primal. Up and down the street, dogs answered each burst with a long, ragged howl of their own. Semones, alone in her apartment with her guitar while the rest of the city celebrated outside, found she didn't mind the solitude. The howling struck her less as a cry for help than as a kind of greeting: proof that she was never really by herself, not with music always keeping her company. By morning, she had the seed of the title track for her sophomore album, Howl.