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Why Lana Del Rey, Cults, and More Indie Heartachers Lurk in the Shadows of ‘Twin Peaks’

Trailer Trash Tracys' Susanne Aztoria / Photo by Cecilia Montesinos

Trailer Trash Tracys
Ester
(Domino)

Awash in reverb and dark-hued passion, this London quartet combines a shoegazer’s pedal chain with an unapologetic love of ’80s new-wave power balladeers like the Motels. Sentimental and spectrally fragile, the lyric-writing team of singer Susanne Aztoria and guitarist Jimmy Lee run on pure mood. “I think we made up some words on the record,” says Lee. “We used the word ‘ensuaze.’ It sounds right, but it doesn’t exist.”

Maria Minerva
Sacred & Profane Love
(100 % Silk)

Minerva’s flickering visions are fueled by the feverish diva’s obsessions with house music, vintage post-punk, and ’90s tween pop or, as she says, a “child’s taste that still haunts me.” She distorts it all into a spillwave whoosh of partial memories and ambiguous emotion. “It maybe sounds cliché,” she says, “but I hope that people feel a longing for something, but they don’t know what it is.”

Blouse
Blouse
(Captured Tracks)

The lo-fi goo-gaze of Portland’s Blouse mixes fluffy, John Hughes-generation dream-pop with chilly lyrics about time, the past, and death. “When I was a little girl, I used to think about death a lot,” says vocalist Charlie Hilton. “When I get stressed, I think about death and it makes me feel better. It’s this really nice feeling knowing it’s this special thing to be alive. For some reason, my songs just always go there.”