The Frequency Austra Operates On

Lose It is the song that introduced most people to Austra—Katie Stelmanis’s project out of Toronto—and it does exactly what its title promises. A synth arpeggio opens the thing, then her voice arrives, high and preternaturally clear, and something in the room shifts. Dark synth-pop built on classical training, which means the arrangements have actual structure beneath the atmosphere rather than just vibes pretending to be architecture. The video has a ritualistic quality—figures in white moving in formations that suggest ceremony without explaining it, which is exactly the right image for a song that feels like it belongs to no particular decade, just to a certain state of mind at a certain hour.