MITSKI: BURY ME AT MAKEOUT CREEK (now available)

GENRE: INDIE ALTERNATIVE
LABEL: DOUBLE DOUBLE WHAMMY

There aren’t enough bands in the alternative scene fronted by badass bass-wielding babes. Fortunately, Mitski and her brand-spankin’-new record bury me at makeout creek are here to correct that issue. She has diversified her already kooky musicality—there are moments on the album that are straight up ’90s indie rock, while other songs have a lo-fi fuzz in an Angel Olsen-y way. In “I Don’t Smoke,” an electric thick with distortion mixes (somehow, very well) with Mitski’s floating, dynamic voice. As soon as the beat comes in, she croons a goosebump inducing lyric: “If your hands need to break more than trinkets in your room / you can lean on my arm as you break my heart.” Yes, the record gets noisy in spots, but don’t let that pull you away from the lyrical content, which is exactly what you’d expect from a record with “makeout creek” in the title — vulnerable stories about teenage angst, twisted devotion, chain smoking cigarettes to remedy heartbreak, and so on. The stripped down acoustic track, “Last Words of a Shooting Star,” highlights Mitski’s crystal-clear voice as it leads us to the end of the record, fittingly, with the word “goodbye.” But the best thing about this goodbye is that you can just go right back to the beginning and listen again. And you will. Trust me.