It’s beginning to look a lot like … winter break. With very few releases by popular artists lined up for the next month, almost no shows and a whole lot of Mariah Carrey on the radio, the wheels of the pop music industry are about to come to a halt for the winter. Some underground artists, however, can benefit from the lack of noise around a new album by Taylor Swift, Beyonce, or Harry Styles to promote their new music. This week’s selection is a balanced compilation of some of my newly discovered favorite artists and some of the greats.

A line in my skin by Karo Lynn

As a new artist, Karo Lynn is yet to show us their full potential, but their latest record, a line in my skin, promises greatness. With deep androgynous vocals, ephemeral melodies and striking country inspired guitar riffs, this album is an indie masterpiece. Quiet, yet powerful, a line in my skin is a deeply personal record. It almost feels like it speaks directly to the subconsciousness.

Musically, it is quite diverse — jumping from Americana acoustic to pop rock, from 80s style soft rock to folklore by Taylor Swift pop, from chill pop to lo-fi disco, and it seems like there isn’t a single genre Karo Lynn can’t make their own. Being only their second album, a line in my skin is still fairly unrefined, still a bit emotionally monotonal, but the future of this genre-bending artist is as interesting as can be.

Memoirs of High-Tech Jazz by Waajeed

Jazz is difficult. Jazz demands your full attention and concentration. Jazz is as much played by the musicians as it is performed by the audience because it just requires full investment. It can be tiring. Waajeed has found some secret formula to translate jazz in a form that retains the genre’s complexity but in bite-sized pieces so it becomes easier to assimilate. The compositions on Memoirs of High-Tech Jazz develop slowly, patiently, adding one piece at a time, letting the listener settle in and explore each individual sound before mixing it all up in one big delicious musical meal. Employing the classical jazz elements, call and response structure, and typical instruments, Waajeed adds some techno rhythms and chill pop vibes to the tracks to make them a bit simpler and more versatile. You can even dance to this record! It’s perfect for a quiet dinner, a beach lounge party, an exposition opening night soundtrack, and a house party in a Berlin club.

Achtung Baby by U2 (released Nov. 18, 1991)

If you feel like this is a deja vu without having ever listened to the album, then you’ve probably read Vol. II of the music column because this is one of my top three childhood favorites. I was raised on U2’s music. I know the lyrics to most of their songs by heart without ever searching them up on Genius. I cannot over exaggerate how highly I regard this band — any other band I listen to I subconsciously measure up to the U2 standard.

Achtung Baby is just one of a myriad of masterpieces U2 have created. It is curious, however, how very few people who listen to U2 actually know that a lot of the classics — like “One”, “Mysterious Ways” and “UltraViolet” — are from the Achtung Baby tracklist and not Joshua Tree (considered the pivotal U2 album and a genre defining record). The beauty of this record is that it is at the same time very traditionally U2, but still has prominent experimental elements; it is both complex in its performance and production but is still an easy listen. It carries simultaneously the zeitgeist of the 80s and early 90s and remains very contemporary with its timeless literary and music themes. Achtung Baby is a musical world, not just a musical record, a world that continues to expand and develop the more you listen to it.

Women Talking by Hildur Guðnadóttir

As one of only three female film composers to have won an Oscar, a Hildur Guðnadóttir official album release is an important milestone for the year. While she also worked on several other projects this year, such as the critically acclaimed movie TAR, this smaller and lesser known project, Women Talking, is worth a mention. Women Talking is a film based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Miriam Toews. Written and directed by Sarah Polley, this female led project tells the story of the nightmarish abuse women in the newly established American colonies experience and how they rise up and fight back. Guðnadóttir’s soundtrack sounds both very classical and very contemporary, giving the film’s themes of domestic abuse and toxic patriarchy a modern twist, serving as a reminder that there is still a fight to lead against the violence against women. This film score album is worth a listen on its own for the subtle and elegant style of the Guðnadóttir compositions.