Expert sound design of this caliber means hours getting poured into each instrument, tirelessly ensuring that everything works well together and stands alone as a sonic object.

On paper, the NIMB and the Feedback Machine seem like the perfect tools to create impenetrable walls of harsh noise and heavy distortion, but Nakamura and Myers coax subdued tones and delicate melodies from their instruments.

These constant interruptions to the album’s flow follow the contours of Gardner’s father’s journal entries, capturing the paranoia of someone aware that they’re in danger but completely unable to comprehend why and to what degree.

Cinematic in scale, these tracks convey a sense of complex interiority and contemplation, setting a ritualistic atmosphere that is better suited to inducing flow states than letting loose on the dance floor.

Wringing out each idea to the maximum, Flemish School builds each rhythmic pattern into a full musical movement, resulting in these devastatingly heavy riffs that propel the esoteric, depressive lyrics forward.

With excerpts from famous writers, personal writing from the artist herself, ethnographic studies, voice memos, photography, and more, the project is a true experiment in sound collage.

The dark, angular, abrasive bones of post rock have once again surfaced after decades of being subdued by indie crescendocore, greeting our doomed moment in history with its off-putting embrace.

Overtones and restrained ornamentation build energy pleasantly, adding depth while the project hones in on GRETA’s gentle, reassuring vocals. Fans of GEORGIA will appreciate Portals’s pop-skewed Braindance that occasionally leans towards a new age Enya-esque sound.

With twangy acoustic guitar and lap steel backed by darkwave synthscapes, Sterling Seperpent paints a picture of haunted desert plains, prodigal sons, and ill-fated lovers. Like a shadowy lone ranger, this album gallops off into a blood-red sunset, and we’re glad to be along for the ride.

Though history later subsumed this story as part of a worldwide movement towards market liberalization, artists like Gullibloon shout out from the back of the room, reminding us of the absurdity of a supposedly “socialist” party dismantling a nation’s welfare program.

Our result crosses the weightless, immobile chords and harmonies of Slint with the bebop impulse to fly across the track with extended improvised melodies that still manage to act as lead lines.

A decade since her last release, Marnie Stern returns to perfectly express the feeling of regression for the sake of progress in The Comeback Kid.

A strange, cathartic, and surprisingly relatable testament to the end of something great, A Time to Love, a Time to Die shares in our torrent of tears as we suffer through our reality of failed closure and disappointing conclusions.

Matmos pulls a variety of sounds for us, ranging from the benign, like a typical house doorbell, to the deeply disturbing, like the sound of the human voice after the larynx has been removed.

An eclectic mix of unidentifiable samples and industrial droning are layered together as peopling tames the chaos and sculpts the cacophony into melody.

Combining the emotionality of early aughts twee rock with the pissed off grit of modern punk has resulted in an actually engaging indie emo album, a feat I thought was no longer possible in the oversaturated indie rock sphere.

Created during the artist’s move across the globe, Describing the Thing by Shane Aspergen is an atmospheric ambient project that aims to decipher the indescribable with a focus on communication that transcends the sometimes limiting bounds of spoken word.

Matching a bedroom pop, folksy dream pop sound with lyrics absolutely dripping in melancholy and nostalgia, Catbells uses its acoustic guitars and reverb-laden vocals to hit an emotional vein located somewhere between Eliott Smith and Nico.

Dey struggles to court her avatar, propositioning this perfect being to fuse with her, which would tarnish the digital purity of the hero girl to allow Dey to reach an awkward, halfway self-actualization.

This vocal style, combined with the band’s reliance upon lo-fi synth instruments that almost calls back to the sound of Daniel Johnston, creates a homespun sound with endless charm and personality.