The imaginary, wider-eyed sister of the Ty Inc. beanie baby “Rocco the Raccoon” casts a fiendishly innocent stare from the cover of Swan Meat’s new EP. Staring into its super dilated pupils bewitches and unsettles. A feral creature turned submissively sweet when translated to plush, this one’s heart-shaped tag has been cheekily rebranded to “Tame.” The baby seems to come from a playhouse possessed with the grim dreams of its owner, stitched as those are with safety pins and ghostly wisps of mist.

More about: SWAN MEAT

Your breath wavers. Somewhere, something shudders. Like a wind that stirs you. A quivering silence in its wake. And abandonment. And a trembling emptiness. A brush of wings in the dark. Dew gathers, then drops. There is a dark pool at the center of everything. Silent, its sheen. But tremulous, a whisper slips sleek across its surface. Tears don’t, perhaps, disturb the night. But what then is this tremor? What then through us seeks release?

More about: Saloli

Recently, it’s become something of a trend for artists formerly associated with club- or dance-oriented music to move away from anything with a steady or danceable rhythm, and toward sounds that refuse genre and incorporate the ambient (in all senses). It’s often presented, in press releases at least, as a move away from populism and toward serious art status. This, however, is an assumption worth calling into question.

More about: Vessel