Abyss

Chelsea Wolfe is an L.A. singer-songwriter with a taste for black veils and other unabashed goth affectations. But her fifth LP shows she's much more than a gimmick. Her voice is more confident than it's ever been, whether it's bathed in industrial noise on the opener, "Carrion Flowers," or backed by ghostly fingerpicking on "Survive." When she sings, "My heart is a tomb/My heart is an empty room," on the loud-quiet-loud single "Iron Moon," you can see a thousand teens lip-syncing dramatically in their bedrooms. There's no mistaking the real hurt in these songs — throughout Abyss, Wolfe uses her pain as a powerful tool, revealing the beauty underneath it.