More Dark Pop Music I Like

When I was working on my Spillover music post, so many goth pop albums came up that I realized I needed a second post for dark synth-based pop. So here it is.

Born Days

Melissa Harris’ Born Days album Where We Live hits the goth spot. Breathy vocals, dark atmospherics, and a certain Icelandic feeling something (even though she’s from Chicago).

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The Bedroom Witch

The Bedroom Witch describes herself as

the misunderstood maker of the veil, the Bedroom Witch lyrically chants spells alluding to an inevitable apocalypse

bandcamp page

I’m working on another post about music that makes you say, “WTF?” and a description like that almost made me post this there. But the album Diaspora was released on Psychic Eye, a label specializing in dark wave/dark punk/electronics/experimental. Sonically, The Dark Witch is right at home there. Diaspora has just enough 80s, and something vaguely Icelandic to the vibe – maybe because the 80s-ness sets up certain expectations before taking an unexpected direction. I just don’t know how you can make music like this in a place as sunny as LA.

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Mueran Humanos

Originally, from Argentina, Berlin-based Mueran Humanos is so Berlin. Their album, Hospital Lullabies, is the spooky, surreal soundtrack to a one-woman film of the same name. This music makes me want to wear eyeliner and drink absinthe (which I swore I’d never do again – the absinthe, not the eyeliner) and dance in a red-lit basement.

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Secret Shame

Trigger Warning for blasphemy.

What if The Cure was fronted by a woman instead of Robert Smith? Might they have an undercurrent of quiet rage instead of melancholy? Lean just slightly more toward punk? They might sound, I think, like Secret Shame. But with no connection to embarrassing adolescent memories, listening to Dark Synthetics dredges up no shame.

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Have a Nice Life

Among the Bandcamp tags for Have a Nice Life are blackgaze and doomgaze. The album cover for Sea of Worry looks like it could belong to a blackgaze band, but the opening notes of the title track could be from The National, and other tracks share elements with my old Icelandic favorites Reykjavik! and Sudden Weather Change. Call it depressive pop or blackgaze or whatever. Whatever you call it, Have a Nice Life is a mood.

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RYBA

There’s just a hint of Bond theme to RYBA‘s Phantom Plaza – not enough to sound like they’re trying too hard, but just enough to evoke stories of deception and betrayal. I also hear a bit of Portishead, especially in opening track “Stalker” which can only ever be a good thing. Even listening to this on a sunny day can’t dispel the felling that you’re wearing a trenchcoat in Berlin on a night of freezing rain.

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