For fans of Red House Painters, Duster, and a particularly confessional form of bedroom emo, A Fear of Open Water by The Exit Bags addresses the nonlinear healing process from childhood trauma with the warm darkness of homespun slowcore.

For fans of Geese, The Strokes, power pop, and rock n roll with that menacing darkness lingering in the background, Way Too Much by Superstar Crush stands out among a crowded pool of indie garage rock talent.

This album could refer equally convincingly to any era of synthetic pop music, much of which was designed in turn to refer back to earlier traditions of danceable popular music or lyrical baroque pop. The references lead nowhere, pointing back to nothing, unprepared to find anything in the future.

For fans of Ulla, Still House Plants, 50s lounge jazz, and Lynchian horror, Balm by Ill Considered constructs a smoke-filled room dense with liminal anxiety. Improvised jazz licks ripple into a pool of deep, open bass frequencies, sucking us into a carefully curated world of static darkness.

For fans of Lingua Ignota, Me Lost Me, neofolk, and the reclamation of feminine archetypes from across history, The New Eve Is Rising by The New Eves strips folk history of its patriarchal trauma, forming new narratives that inspire hope and ambition.

For fans of Ramleh, This Heat, no wave, and self-induced sleep paralysis, it Rules by Flender finds a unique mix of post hardcore harmonics and space rock songwriting to create the ultimate bad trip.

For fans of Asher White, Willy Rodriguez, Car Seat Headrest, bedroom pop, skramz, and sappy romance under the sunset, the new album Apiary by Gingerbee will melt your heart with its wildly maximalist yet touchingly personal sound.

Tbilisi’s own Giorgi Koberidze engages with this diversity on Forests, Tales, Cities, Forests, a neoclassical work that uses electroacoustic precision to vividly convey each moment and angle of this dynamic region’s existence.

I’m describing the pandemic we find on All the Dead Melt Down as Rain by Uboa, a horrifyingly lonely and uncomfortably ordinary affair conveyed through intense industrial noise.

Mexico City experimentalists Demencia Infantil capture an unusual sort of radio wave on their new record Manigote Cualquiera, tuning into frequencies more spiritual than electromagnetic.

For fans of Minutemen, Hella, technical death metal, and the deconstruction of traditional americana, The Big E by Editrix strikes right at the heart of our deepening distrust, dwelling in the uncertainty that follows the collapse of institutional credibility.

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.