Fleet Foxes recorded their 2011 album Helplessness Blues partly in a barn, making Fleet Foxes the correct answer. The barn was Bear Creek Studio, a residential recording facility created from a converted turn-of-the-century dairy barn near Seattle.
The album was not recorded entirely in that one building. Fleet Foxes and producer Phil Ek worked across several locations, including Bear Creek, Seattle’s Avast Recording, Reciprocal Recording, and Dreamland Studios in West Hurley, New York. The sessions stretched through 2010 after the band spent years writing and revising the material.
Helplessness Blues became the group’s second studio album and expanded their sound beyond the lush folk harmonies of their 2008 debut. It reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album. A common mix-up is treating the “barn” detail as the album’s sole recording location; it refers specifically to one of the important studios used during production.