With The Vildes releasing "Manicure for the Strangers", I found myself instinctively checking my reflection in the black screen of my monitor, correcting a frown that absolutely no one was around to see. It’s an uncanny reaction, but then again, Ingvild Tafjord, Hilde Wahl, and Glenn Tvedt specialize in this specific breed of beautifully curated anxiety. They understand the weight of the mask. https://open.spotify.com/track/14FyhVuMhJ0bHGmlF08ztU?si=215d0df609044463 The track...

Sophia Mengrosso’s new album, “Unforgiven”, doesn’t so much start as it does detonate, a thirteen-song treatise on survival. Her voice, a thing clearly trained for gilded halls and velvet curtains, instead wails from within a foundry’s clang and fire. The result is a bizarre and beautiful collision, the sonic equivalent of discovering a lost Caravaggio painting lit by a flickering fluorescent tube in a...