Thank god the history of and my history with the artist at #15 is limited – after two nearly 1,000-word write ups for Florence and Clipse, I’m glad to have the opportunity to be a bit more brief. But please don’t take my brevity as any sort of slight on Alex Sauser-Monnig, otherwise known as Daughter of Swords, and their wonderful sophomore album Alex.

Sauser-Monnig has been making music for some time – they’re part of the folk trio Mountain Man, which has been around since 2009. Alex is the follow-up to their solo debut, Dawnbreaker, that came out in 2019. Go ahead and hit play on the video above, for the lead single from the new album, “Talk to You.” It’ll be a great introduction into the brilliance that is Daughter of Swords, and maybe you won’t even need to read the rest of what I write before you download / buy the album yourself.

Bouncy, ecstatic hand claps and what feels like general happiness draws you in immediately. And you could likely leave it at that and thoroughly enjoy the record. But it’s when you start to pay attention to the lyrics that things get really interesting. Sauser-Monnig told Indy Week, “I wrote a happy-sounding record about the death of humanity on planet Earth… I have a hard time saying the world is dying… I don’t want to give up on it, but it feels like we’re Thelma & Louise–ing toward the cliff.”

“Money Hits” is a favorite of mine, with its sparse acoustic guitar, low-fi percussion, and piano solo in the middle. It could be a brief, joyful, escape with a new fling, or a cry for escape. “Running through the woods / while the water rises / lightning flashes / worlds collide / all I wanna know / is there anything / better than letting go?” Later on in the album, “Strange,” while bubbly, is particularly dark. “I feel strange / but it’s just a natural reaction / to a world coming apart at the seams.”

Alex hits all the right indie rock sweet spots, landing somewhere in the early 2000s for me. The Shins meet Rilo Kiley, but with a healthy dose of the kind of “overwhelming social anxiety while in love” we can easily find ourselves in here in the 2020s. It’s right up my alley, and I hope it is for you, too.