Punishing isn’t the first word you’d think to describe Soft Kill, an official SXSW artist, but the more their gothic barrages of post-punk and shoegaze pummel into you, the apter the label becomes. On Savior, the Portland-based outfit buries most of their synthesizers into a thundering vessel of fuzz and shadowy guitars. Like streetlights quickly appearing and vanishing again as you drive past them, moments of joy appear only to get smothered in a wave of rumbling toms and a peal of crashing cymbals. It’s a relentless hail of gloom and doom, something akin to The Cure without reveling in any of the performative aesthetics of goth music; Soft Kill is purely here for the raw ennui.

-By Tucker Pennington