Badtaste, the creative vehicle of Czech-German artist Anna Kristina, has dropped a conceptual diptych titled "Hedonism, Sobriety." Now operating out of Paris, the singer, songwriter, and dancer has constructed a release that thrives on friction. It is a project that looks directly at the messy, often contradictory nature of human desire and refuses to tidy it up for easy consumption. The music operates in the...

The Austin-based songwriter Alex Winters turns the terrifying act of emotional surrender into a towering alt-rock confession. There is a specific kind of silence that occupies a room right before a heavy truth is spoken aloud. It is thick, suffocating, and entirely self-imposed. We build fortresses out of our past traumas, stacking bricks of deflection and mortar of avoidance to guarantee nothing can ever hurt us...