In a reversal of typical associations with id and ego, the id here feels most represented by moments of airy vocals, bouncy rhythms, whimsical percussion, and light melodies, while the ego emerges later on the album in the form of difficult chord progressions and unsettling interactions.

Making the rare dark alt pop record that genuinely charts new territory and employs exciting, fresh sounds, Ukrainian group Тощо (Toshcho) with their new album Косметика (Kosmetyka) makes alternative party music for a time and place with nothing to celebrate.

Finding our paradigms constantly challenged by the world’s complexity, we encounter doubt even in our most fundamental assumptions, an upheaval represented sonically by spacier composition with jazz influences, all centered around dissonant meanderings reminiscent of krautrock.

Assailable//Agonism by Abandoncy shrieks out in post hardcore fright, pointing out the mechanisms driving people against each other while hopelessly feeling their own feet swept away by the same unstoppable tide.

Puncturing the dark homogeneity of trendy post punk with an individual flair and local influences, Slif Slaf Slof by Mermaid Chunky mixes traditional Scottish and Irish instrumentation and dance sequences with that moody sound we all know and love.

This once-in-a-lifetime coming-of-age moment shines in all its melodramatic glory on An Appeal to Cats in the Business of Love by Trent Liptak, a bedroom folk concoction that balances its homespun charm with surprisingly mature songwriting and a production quality that punches well above its weight.

Paradise Cinema simulates this process on their new album Returning, Dream, an experimental jazz record that uses West African traditional percussion and sinister synth sounds to contextualize otherwise tranquil solos into a world of anxiety.

Stripping pop songwriting from pop aesthetics results in After Image by Hyper Gal, a fascinating fusion sound that falls into no other category than the seemingly paradoxical no wave pop microgenre.

Thus, a dark underbelly lurks under much of the record, with some rhythm section grooves which would feel comfortably at home in the abyssal settings of 90s post rock and post hardcore.

No More Apocalypse Father by We Are Winter’s Blue and Radiant Children, a Montreal supergroup sharing a member with Godspeed You! Black Emperor, takes a noisy ambient approach to this sensation of empty empathy.

Though free jazz frequently draws from a collective creative euphoria, the dark sound of The Face of Us, Smiling on Its Own by The Big Fuss Ensemble builds its emotion in the complete opposite direction.

Spiky guitar leads and wild bass riffs add a jittery edge to a strong foundation of foot-stomping drum patterns, all of which slams into a brick wall of moaning vocals and lo-fi production.

The resulting cleanly produced, tightly composed, meticulously detailed afrobeat album illustrates Lollise’s identity as a New York musician whose childhood musical interests vary dramatically from most of her American peers.

By the end of our journey, we learn that the energy we have spent to change our course only increased our speed, intensifying this unvirtuous cycle and potentially locking us in this spiritual desert forever.

This ambient record tells the story of a family journeying from Texas to California in the 1970s, simultaneously experiencing and witnessing the effects of the first major postwar period of deindustrialization and stagflation.

This experimental hip hop album pulls a wide array of samples and features, emphasizing this music as a collaborative, communal space that persists in spite of and in response to a world of insurmountable chaos.

This experimental electronic album unfolds from a murky swamp of pure chaos into a spotless sculpture of harmonious order, as vocals progressively shed their distortion and a signature detuned guitar gradually exits the scene.

Where an intense and unconcealed fetishization of fame and an unrelenting commitment to emotional honesty combine, the melancholic alternative rock of Forget Her Somehow by May the Queen takes shape, an awkwardly earnest yet undeniably lovable testament to thoughtful, well-crafted outsider art.

By pulling samples from old vinyl and using vintage 80s synths, re-sampled and paired with intimate recordings like teeth chattering and smacking gum, the party is made personal.

Queda Livre by Caxtrinho reimagines the literary genre of chronicle as a meandering, rhizomatic, nebulous entity. While acoustic sections of traditional Brazilian music tell a more straightforward narrative, the band frequently diverts into vast, misty fields of psychedelia, gazing jaws agape into the sublime magnitude of dispersed causes that influence so many facets of this story.