Little did Sam Beam—then a Miami-based university professor with filmmaking ambitions—know that Our Endless Numbered Days would take off the way that it did. Shortly after releasing his debut album in 2002, The Creek Drank the Cradle, Beam became a notable presence in an indie-folk movement—alongside artists like Damien Rice and The Mountain Goats—that favored form-fitting simplicity. Having self-recorded Creek with minimal resources, Beam expanded his instrumental expression with his 2004 follow-up, backing his somber, fingerpicking performances with string arrangements and touches of Delta blues. Hollywood quickly took notice, and it didn’t take long for his spare, wistful lullabies to feature on prime-time TV shows like House M.D. and Grey’s Anatomy. His calming eloquence may sound easy on the ears set against dramatic scenes, but Beam’s Southern Gothic-inspired narratives were much more thoughtful than what was on the surface. “Cinder and Smoke” and “Each Coming Night,” while softened with gentle banjo-picking and acoustic guitar, use natural imagery to tell intimate accounts of personal ruin and renewal. At the same time, Beam could draw from memories of his Christian upbringing on the iridescent “Sodom, South Georgia,” adopting dark, Faulkner-like storytelling about the cyclical nature of life and death. And then there’s the undeniably romantic “Naked As We Came,” which brought to mind the stripped-down beauty of cult British artist Nick Drake. The song’s success catapulted Our Endless Numbered Days to reach certified Gold status for seminal indie label Sub Pop. It allowed Beam to dream even bigger on 2007’s The Shepherd’s Dog, trading pastoral folk for a fuller and progressive sound backed by an eight-piece band. While he continued to evolve as an artist past Days, its influence continued to be felt into the late aughts, foretelling the folk-rock resurgence popularized by the likes of Fleet Foxes and Mumford & Sons.