Hannah’s Encounters - June 2025

I've had Nothing Deep to Say/Beauty in the Breakdown on a hiatus, but I'm starting to put together a list for the next batch and I don't want to jinx anything but it's looking really good :) "Dry Chicken", my new song as The Answers In Between, was a labor of love and I'm very proud of it. Go listen <3

Ethel Cain - Nettles

RIYL: You're reading this newsletter do I really need a RIYL

I’m a trans woman, what am I gonna do, NOT put Ethel Cain on my list? Since I interviewed her in 2021, Hayden Anhedonia's project has swelled into a massive, Radio City Music Hall-headlining phenomenon, at least relative to its hypothetical audience. Anhedonia grew up on Tumblr, and she's appropriately developed a knack for macabre one-liners that I would have reblogged years ago, most of all "god loves you, but not enough to save you" from penultimate Preacher's Daughter track "Sun-Bleached Flies." This song oscillates between melodrama and genuinely devastating lyrics, between "it wasn't pretty like the movies!" and the grittier "That picture on the wall you're scared of looks just like you/I wanna bleed, I wanna hurt the way that boys do." Not to focus too much on Anhedonian's identity, but that's specifically striking for a trans woman to say and if I elaborate on that there will somehow be Twitter discourse even though I'm not on there anymore. What really sets the Ethel Cain project apart is that her music is unafraid to be genuinely beautiful just as often as it's afraid to be ugly. It makes me think of Schoepenhaur’s Porcupine Dilemma; get too close, and you’ll be pricked. There's a pure schmaltzy-pop melody that doesn't appear until almost four and a half minutes into the song, like LeAnna Rimes writing a topline for Grouper if T Bone Burnett produced it. Only Ethel Cain can make me write that sentence, and only Ethel Cain would never have that appear again, a fleeting moment of relief mirroring the lyrics’ ill-fated relationship.

Pool Kids - Easier Said Than Done

RIYL: Oso Oso, Foxing, Param- a cane yanks me off stage

Pool Kids sign to the legendary Epitaph Records for their third LP. The production is markedly different on “Easier Said Than Done” packed with swirling vocal spins and frenetic drum processing, yet with the raw energy of their early material record. I actually thought Will Yip was on production before learning it's the same team! Still, I love this on its own terms; Christine Goodwyne knows how to write a melody and the song itself is a compelling exploration of life with OCD. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the ending at first, the way it doesn’t explode the way it should but I grew to love that; she’s still screaming up the octave, it’s just hard to hear over intrusive thoughts (here represented as multipart escalating countermelodies.) 

Oropendola - Palace of Sunflowers

RIYL: the Roches, Sufjan at his silliest, early Regina Spektor

Since hearing Joanna Schubert's excellent debut album as Oropendola, Waiting For The Sky To Speak, I've been captivated by her music, the way it shapeshifts between her at a piano and her with a seven piece band. This album, Swimming, is more stripped-back than the debut, but that intimacy keeps the songs from feeling too saccharine. Schubert's music is eccentric and whimsical (there's that word again), but more cozy than cloying, like stumbling upon an old VHS recording of a children's show during a late-night YouTube browse. With its toy piano and almost entirely major-key structure, this could easily be a theme song for a pre-school show about squirrels, but like one of the shows adults enjoy like Bluey or Shape Island. I've grown tired of the Pavement-alikes that dominate indie circles at the moment and when I need a break from the Lendermen of the world, this is perfect. I mean, they're literally frolicking in the fields in this video, what's not to love?

Sophia Stel - Everyone Falls Asleep In Their Own Time

RIYL: Ethel Cain, Crushed, James Ivy

There are a lot of people working in this Cocteau Twins-inspired lane, but this is one of the better songs. I love how grainy it is, overcompressed and distorted even when it's not objectively louder in than any other song on this list. This song is so dreamy it took me multiple listens to realize that the chord progression even shifted; both progressions loop in a way that they could go on forever. I'm going to keep an eye on Stel, especially because this is the kind of song that reminds me why I enjoy breaking down production in the first place. Her breakthrough “I’ll Take It” is more lyrics-focused (“I just likеd her jeans/Now we're here swapping passwords” is a classic toxic-gay-enmeshment lyric), but there’s value in the simple things:  “I’m all yours, babe, saturday night” is a pure pop lyric if I’ve ever heard one.

Jayla Kai - Parking Lot

How I found: Opening for Pool Kids and Beach Bunny,  

RIYL: Soccer Mommy, Beabadobee, Snail Mail

Bright-eyed bushy-tailed indie rock from a 22-year-old songwriter I encountered opening for Pool Kids and Beach Bunny. I immediately picked out Kai's sincerity and earnestness (which makes her a great fit for that bill), but I don't think her music is ever corny. There's enough musicianship and enough clever arrangements that the cutesier moments like one unreleased song's refrain "even molecules break up" feel like winks to the listeners. It also helps that these songs are very well-made, brought to life by Ruben Radlauer of Model/Actriz and Allen Tate of San Fermin. The thing with younger musicians is that they’re not locked into a sound yet; on this EP there are slow-burners like centerpiece "Wasting Time" and poppier songs like “Parking Lot”. If you can write a chorus like that one, you're on my radar.

Shaggo - CityMD

How I found it: Songwriter share two years ago

RIYL: The Shaggs (no really), Le Tigre, The Runaways

I encountered Lucy Rinzler-Day at a songwriting exchange, and enjoyed her frequently funny stream of consciousness – I immediately thought of Sidney Gish but with a throatier, deeper delivery. With her band Shuggo, it’s entirely different, closer to 90s riot grrl bands while still retaining the endearingly eccentric modern-singer-songwriter. There are a lot of songs I could choose; the situationship-gone-wrong of “I Wanted Fun”, the oddly Robert Smith delivery of “Lost a Sock (Need a Friend)”, but I’m going with their irreverent most recent single “CityMD”. A speck of dust floats into Rinzley-Day’s cornea and it gradually causes her to question her entire relationship. I wondered if it was a metaphor for how women’s healthcare isn’t taken seriously enough, then I wondered if the speck was a metaphor, but no, it is literal, albeit a vehicle to explore. If her partner can’t support her over a speck of dust, then god forbid something more serious happens while the partner insists “I’m just a little guy 🥺.” One of the better breakup songs I’ve heard in a minute and genuinely funny in how it keeps tying back to the central theme: “so you say it’s all in my head now/actually it’s deep inside my eye.”

Theo Bleak - Look Out The Window

How I found it: a song with the excellent title “Don’t Borrow Grief From Later”

RIYL: early MUNA, Lilith Fair but gothic

I write about this a lot in both my own music and in artist profiles, but In an enmeshed relationship of any kind, there’s often a desire to crawl under the other person’s skin and understand them entirely. You can’t bridge the divide and meld minds, but you may still want to, in order to either know someone fully or stave off loneliness. Or both! Theo Bleak (AKA Katie Lynch) does her best to bridge that divide on this new EP — it explores enmeshed friendships by actively attempting to document the other person’s inner world. But as any exploration of someone else’s mind inevitably does, it instead becomes about Bleak herself. Her music gives a post-punk, occasionally outright gothic edge to indie folk, particularly in “Don’t Borrow Grief From Later” with Twilight Sad frontman James Graham.  And yet! This song is prime Windowpane, as my colleague and fellow Singles Jukebox writer Dave Moore coined. In my next post, I'll go more into what that means, so make sure you’re subscribed.