Shemp Tropical by The Fred Karger Memorial Lump Band uses a highly novel, progressive, challenging sound to create a future current events podcast that realizes the worst of today’s psychedelic nightmares

In some ways, Songs for Lost Travellers by Confucius MC and Bastien Keb fulfills our core expectations for an introspective experimental rap album, but at every turn this record offers us something unexpected to hoist itself to true left-field greatness.

A suspicious, pessimistic misanthropic worldview animates Wish Defense by FACS, a grimy, industrial post punk record whose massive rhythm section and eerie guitars personify an inner demon.

Animal Collective member Geologist and longtime collaborator D.S. take this concept to experimental depths on A Shaw Deal, a record whose sparse yet impactful sonic source material embarks on an undead cyclical march into unexpected emotional territory.

Traditional religious instrumentation like organs, pianos, and choir immediately sound antiquated, but these ancient tools holds within them the keys to expansive, inventive modern compositions. Honey for the Ants by Wojciech Rusin chops, layers, and sequences these components into boldly contemporary, warmly optimistic landscapes.

Modernism promised emancipation through all its products, from factories that provided financial security to architecture that emphasized workers’ wellbeing to art that glorified the future. We now live in that future, and the scattered remains of this ill-fated optimistic fever inspire the sonic landscape of What Is Success by Open Head.

Spontaneous Human Combustion by Hot Organs takes a magnifying glass to this surreal horror, approaching gothic proto punk with lo-fi production and half-spoken vocals to deliver biting social critiques.

Spontaneous Human Combustion by Hot Organs takes a magnifying glass to this surreal horror, approaching gothic proto punk with lo-fi production and half-spoken vocals to deliver biting social critiques.

 The cyclical nature of folk tradition re-emerges on Ring of Fire by Molasses, a manically experimental rendition of timeless traditional tunes.

Hometown Girl by U.e. presents music for abandoned spaces, inspired by the communities that once thrived there while remaining self-consciously awkward given our postmodern inexperience.

Every revolution needs a soundtrack, and the pensive, dramatic ambient music of Temple of Hope by Saba Alizadeh provides such a retrospective backdrop for the women’s rights movement in Iran.

Music exists everywhere in this world, yearning for freedom. Sounds enter the magical chambers of (The Game Is) Hypnosis by Joseph White as mundane, forgotten artifacts of the everyday, only to emerge as components of a warm, bubbling, beautiful work of art.

Blending folk legend and real history, Folklore shrouds in mythic imagery tales of violent worker exploitation met with unflinching bloodshed in return. But, this anonymous one man band asks, what is the victory worth, when the prize is the destruction of your homeland, stripping the forests and forever poisoning the lakes with coal tar?

We knew to expect an experimental turn for the next Ethel Cain record, but nothing could have prepared us for Perverts, a dark ambient record that experiments thematically, sonically, vocally, and structurally to present a nuanced philosophical system that addresses some of the deepest, darkest emotional hollows.

A lone hiker scrambles up a cliff face, sent on this harrowing journey by the thrill of the sublime and only now taking stock of the implications. The meditative, folk-inspired raga of Language of the Torch by Kelby Clark starts at this key moment, the inflection point at which headstrong ecstasy freezes into shuddering fear.

Industrial hardcore band Haunted Horses skirts the event horizon on Dweller, a relentless, terrifying record to guide you through the threshold of outsideness.

Split LP No esperan por nadie by Chilean bands Coclea and Canut de Bon dresses its ferocious, moshable hardcore riffs in classic emo darkness, with each band bringing their own flair to this harsh, angular, riveting sound.

The music of Meridian by Tanpopo Crisis continues the rich tradition of atmospheric black metal, a style which derives temporal intensity from a frantically blast beating rhythm section while harnessing all the melodic, harmonic, and sentimental power of a string orchestra through its sweeping guitar soundscapes.

 We’ve never been more spiritually free, we’ve never been so existentially hungry, and we’ve never been so essentially clueless. This directionless, all-consuming lack appears in fits and spurts across the epic compositions of Unlimited Violence Apologia by Bee Hive Ski Race, an emo album that effortlessly treads into hardcore, noise rock, and grunge with its versatile vocals and tight instrumentals.

At the core of the whimsical experimentation of So, Ho Hum, Moribet sits effortlessly compelling songs in the folksy singer-songwriter tradition, fighting desperately to shine their human radiance through a suffocating film of lo fi electronica.