Astronauts, etc is a band formed by Anthony Ferraro, Toro y Moi's keyboardist. I personally really love many of their songs. For this exercise, i'm going to decompose one of my favorite songs: The Border
The Border by Astronauts, etc.
Catalogue of Attributes
BPM:
~80 BPM
Sound Elements:
Jazzy drums, Liverpool bass heavily accentuated, simple strings, piano, mystic low pitched vocals
Harmony:
Except for the chorus, the harmony alternates between a Gmaj7 and Fm7. 4/4 time signature. The chorus builds up from a Gmaj7 -> A6 -> C aug? (i think, its hard to tell) and then back down to a Bm -> A6 -> Gmaj7.
Melody:
Mostly bass driven. Repeated riff (a very nice one btw) on Gmaj7 and Fm7 with some string down arpeggios playing around a Fm7 chord with some very subtle but exquisite variations.
Rhythm:
4/4 time signature. The intro plays 3 bars and then jumps into actions. For any two bar segment, the first one has a snare driven beat and for the second bar, the cymbal takes the spotlight.
Form:
The 2-chord progression on everything except for the chorus is repeated and built up until some minor tension builds up. Then the chorus enters, increasing going up into a new progression. There are some piano octaves played on a 4n time. The song ends with a high pitched and added E note played by the strings, leaving us wanting more.