However, Caroline pushes past the confines of this largely sanitized, unapproachable realm with their stunningly relatable, aesthetically humble, charmingly maximalist performances, encouraging these massive, messy collaborations that turn their ensemble into an ascending cult.

Search Results push firmly in the upbeat direction on Go Mutant, a retelling of some of indie’s earliest influences while swapping out every hint of morbid goth with energetic punk.

Amuleto Apotropaico stage a spiritual intervention on their self-titled EP, using the music as fortification around themselves to hold the army of emotional darkness at bay.

However, as each song gradually progresses into an increasingly chaotic wall of guitar, paradoxically warm, comforting countermelodies trickle in, coexisting with some of the album’s bleakest and most cathartic lyrical moments.

When people describe concept-heavy prog albums as “rock opera,” I often feel as if they’ve taken their description just a little too far, but the music we find on Live at Club Goodman by Koenjihyakkei vindicates the rock opera descriptor a thousand times over.

The intensely chaotic, intimately confessional sound of …Then You Lay Waste to the World by Zayok fills its sonic space with gargantuan bass synths and fast, frequent digital flourishes, angling towards accessibility while blazing its own trail.

Even if goth stopped here, the genre would still provide an endless well of interesting art, but experimental outfit a/lpaca push these boundaries on Laughter, an eclectic mix of gothified sounds that call out to us through a downpour of malaise.

Cleveland experimental jazz outfit Mourning [A] BLKstar gives us an escape route from this cold indifference on Flowers for the Living, a celebration of friendship to encourage us to express our own appreciation.

Where a typical work of psych rock relishes in its detachment from reality, Age by Cuneiform Tabs gazes out desperately from within a prison of dissociation, gradually accepting a life of eternal dream.

Few spaces feel quite as intimate and communal as a jazz combo, and Milena Casado investigates this concept of musical groups as a means of self-discovery and security on Reflection of Another Self.

Bridging the divide between the shimmery, splashy shoegaze-obsessed world of indie rock and the dissonant realm of the noise rock vanguard, Low on Foot by Slow Mass fittingly engages with themes of social wandering and personal rebuilding with their unique brand of catchy, tense, and dynamic post hardcore.

After living definitively under geek rule for 30 years, we can safely say that no geek ever gets taken seriously as this sort of insurgent figure anymore, and any hope for a geek utopia has shifted into more nuanced art like A Simple Life by Shark?.

Rather than chase down that elusive purity, Shearling embraces and elevates their animal nature, pulling sounds and themes from the American West in the worship of a familiar yet treacherous idol.

Our view of the event gets cut short of any actual resolution, or of any verbal response at all aside from an exasperated exclamation, but the musical framing of these few words within a frantic, energetic, percussive, angular environment shows us the community’s real, raw reaction from which any other action will proceed.

Layers of found and produced sound compress into a single stream of consciousness, pulling together mundane youtube videos, traditional folk music, and euphoric free improvisation into a mass that at first feels incomprehensible.

This existential insecurity combined with the faux safety of codependence sparks the wild energy of Fever Songs by Godot, a deeply empathetic and innovative sludge metal album detailing the absolute self-annihilation following the breakdown of an unhealthy relationship.

No matter the strength of our creative talents, the art we create will always fall short of fully realizing our imaginations, but the new album Shapeshitter by I’m Being Good makes a deliberate decision to lean into this mismatch.

Such an experience of achieving the meager dreams of a small town animates Gem of the West by SENTRIES, an instant art rock classic from this increasingly entrenched internet music powerhouse.

Experimental folk collective Milkweed recount one such story on Remscéla, an album rendered timeless through its fascinating combination of modern instrumentation and deliberately cobwebbed production.

Lydia Roberts captures this widespread helpless stagnation on Quitters, a harsh noise record with a fleshy human core.