With all of the annoyingly sterile new wave and goth rock out there, Tongue in the Mind’s debut self-titled EP goes far beyond a mere breath of fresh air.

Thoughts explode into shrapnel, each stanza appearing as a distinct obsession with its own melodic motif before quickly falling off track as the speaker locates a new source of anxiety.

Glitch pop collective Pet Wife with their new record Foam Set explores love as the fulfillment of an essential lack, as an interaction that requires an uncomfortable amount of vulnerability, always teetering on the edge of codependence.

When confronted with the horrifying mundanity of Weezer’s post-hiatus stage presence and the crowds that accumulate to watch it, however, this kid flew headfirst into an existential crisis that lead to the creation of Weezer’s Blue Album under the name Trashdog.

The Japanese psychedelic rock underground has been on the radar of the international music scene for decades, but few groups in the community have been as prolific as Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O..

An increasingly common byproduct of this sound, tinnitus, wreaks havoc on many people’s ability to produce or enjoy music, but experimental artist Lola de la Mata turned her own symptoms into auditory art on her new album Oceans on Azimuth.

After losing her mother, Quebec avant-folk artist Myriam Gendron started work on Mayday, a collection of songs that eloquently retell the story of her long, cyclical recovery process.

Suddenly, a chaotic, jubilant big band busts down the door, accepting the refined, individual artistic voice into an unstoppable chorus of pure energy, pure ecstasy as the group unifies in a call to the divine.

Unaddressed, intense emotions hit a bottleneck and spew out in the shape of Back to Shilmarine by HAAL, a gritty post rock album that revels in the tension of misunderstood and awkward feelings.

If you've ever had serious concerns in your life met with trite, regurgitated sayings from those you're meant to respect, You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To by Knocked Loose should hit close to home.

This optimistic record touches on themes of universality and immortality, enjoying the chemistry of its three musicians and encouraging us to find similar egalitarian partnerships in our own lives.

This discomfort structures the aesthetic direction of Spine by Kee Avil, an experimental pop album that balances beautiful, airy vocals with gritty, organic, noisy, and  dissonant instrumentals to show us the two-faced nature of time.

As the independent rock world turns in a darker, heavier, more dissonant direction, Quebec band Possibles introduces themselves on their self-titled debut as a group unafraid of a lighter, leaner sound.

To Welsh rock experimentalists Obey Cobra on their new record Mwg Drwg, humans have no identifiable purpose on earth but to annihilate harmony, to degrade the perfect order of nature into an industrial planet-killing machine.

However, every second spent in this virtual garden of Eden eats away at our precious time, causing a whirlwind of emotion as we emerge from our lair and notice changes in the outside world.

Each short composition in this 5-track release is limited to 1 minute in length, but there is a sense that these unfolding symmetrical formulae continue on into infinity, even after the recording stops.

These feelings mark the absolute horizon of human frustration, as vain as screaming in agony at the limitations of gravity, and we must continue screaming until the clouds of grief clear and we bury those perfect memories forever.

These overbearing vocals beg us for validation, screaming out from a depressive void that yearns for love and refuses to look inward to find it.

The new psychedelic album The Cool Cloud of Okayness by Tara Jane O’Neil brings this narrative to life, telling the story of an artist who lost their home to a fire right as the pandemic caught the world in its vice grip.

These playful tracks inspire janky and disjointed movement, with crunchy chords, wailing feedback, and discordant counterpoints fighting a tight rhythm section for control over our bodies.