Empath

Empath is a four-piece band that creates music that is equal parts punk rock and dream pop, played with jagged, scrappy edges and frantic energy, pushing hazy vocals, and woozy instrumentation. They occasionally engage in the kinds of sudden shifts and rapidly finger-picked chords that are typically associated with art rock or math rock. They also turn up the distortion in the studio to create a grimy layer on top that buries said haze underneath, which is an interesting effect. What makes this stylistic choice particularly gripping is the fact that the songs are actually quite catchy and memorable, which helps them cut right through those layers. Despite having two synths in the line-up, they do not go down the synth pop road, though they had some inklings of it in their first album, Active Listening: Night on Earth (2019).