For fans of Don Caballero, Moribet, outsider folk, out of body experiences, and chasing that romantic dragon even if it kills you, Fool’s Errand by Theadoore tells tales of longing with a voice dripping in tension, energy, and whimsy.

For fans of Jockstrap, psych rock, and self-destructive romance, Kiss from the Balcony by Madeline Kenney designs songs just as complex, messy, and beautiful as all your unrequited infatuations.

For fans of Björk, Slint, bedroom pop, melancholic diary entries, and a nostalgia for when things didn’t feel this way, i’m am in dark places by SARN has an experimental electronic sound that will hit you where it hurts.

For fans of Explosions in the Sky, Pram, the romanticization of your own mental collapse, and diving into community to escape your fractured self, Disiniblud by Disiniblud mixes early post rock and experimental electronica to create something charming, tragic, and dazzling.

Why Patterns gives voice to this suicidal zeitgeist on their new album SCREAMERS, a all-out sludgey noise punk assault that eviscerates the entire self aside from the foremost id.

Similarly, dry, looping guitars and simple, exposed synths invoke the exact opposite of the sunshine suggested by their bubblegum melodies, ripping psych pop apart and dangling its entrails before us to clinically examine.

This sort of omnibus discontent animates the new EP Object 1 by Flooding, a post-indie-rock experiment in darkness, discord, and despair.

Experimental electronic artist Qur’an Shaheed takes that increasingly rare dive into self-actualization on Pulse, characterizing spiritual, moral, and creative development as the ultimate forms of liberation.

The new experimental ambient album Caligo by Siavash Amini retells history in all of its unsightly truth, baking self-destruction and tragedy into every sound.

An underpinning bed of simple yet enormous synth sounds hints at an influence from the similarly folk-oriented subgenre of dungeon synth, while massively varied percussion and sonically adventurous strings point back to the grandiose instrumental adventures of 2000s post rock.

The band takes a fairly straightforward, organic, and rock-oriented approach to this popular sound, live-recording their titanic swells of ascending chord progressions to compliment their unabashedly raw, personal vocal performances.

If capitalism ever feels impossible to appease, that its demands make a mockery of our human nature and capabilities, you’ve felt the rage animating the inventive new punk record La Debacle de las Divas by Blanco Teta.

If you’re wondering how left wing anger feels different today than it did in 2016, this compact hip hop collaboration will give you everything you need to know, with its apocalyptic tone contrasting sharply with the sheer goofiness of the narrator’s enemy.

The entire sonic environment feels dreamlike, ethereal, unavailable, insinuating that, even if we could reach the apex of life, we probably wouldn’t even realize we were there.

Muzak for the Encouragement of Unproductivity by Jasmine Guffond is a unique revival and subversion of the commercial soundscape. Guffond's grounded approach to Muzak induces a state of alert relaxation, centering a message of conscious consumption that is needed now more than ever. These longform arrangements still the listener's inner atmosphere, melodious reed and brass instruments slowly mingling in reverb-soaked harmony. 

On the free jazz extravaganza Sun by Zoh Amba, joy manifests as a journey, as a path of inner discovery that passes through many finite moods and energies on its march towards transcendent knowledge.

However, an experimental edge built on dark folk harmonies and freely associated lyrics pulls the record back from its more straightforward tendencies, introducing the darkness from which our speaker longs for escape.

The seemingly random and uncontrolled phenomena we witness in our political, economic, and cultural environments mirror the eerie tones of Unfall by Dan Kinzelman, a jazz ensemble record haunted by the uneven repetition of tape loops.

Adding to the rich garage rock tradition of New York City with their unique blend of jazz, hip hop, soft rock, and punk, the new self-titled LP from Cab Ellis sounds simultaneously accessible and personal, unique and familiar.

Though this graceful, awe-inspiring journey never fully falters, moments of palpable tension introduce realistic negativity to this otherwise euphoric experience.