Sweet Love Under Tyranny is the LA-based producer and vocalist who has spent the last five years shaping one of the more distinctive sounds in the current synth underground — coldwave and Italo pulled through new romantic melodrama, high-gloss vocals cutting from aching falsetto to guttural growl. Her self-titled EP, out November 6 on à La Carte Records, is the most fully realized version of that sensibility yet: four tracks and nineteen minutes of nocturnal dance music built for the specific twilight hour when a room is either about to fill up or already empty.

Available on 12" vinyl

La Isla Electronica are the Portland synth-punk quartet of Susana Sainz (vocals, synth), Ian Howe (guitar, synth), Amy Kay (bass), and AJ McClary (drums), and "3:17" is their debut full-length for à La Carte Records. Nine songs, twenty-four minutes, sung in Spanish, the record drifts through Mediterranean heat and Pacific rain in the same breath — femme-fronted synth-punk that splits the difference between the cold romanticism of early-80s Spanish underground electronic music (Aviador Dro, Décima Víctima, Esplendor Geométrico) and the bright-edged urgency of The Go-Go's, Chin-Chin, and Missing Persons.

Available on 12" vinyl

Tilburg post-punk quartet Docile Bodies return with their sophomore LP "Rest," eight tracks that read like the empty hours of someone else's house — slower, more patient, and harder to console than their 2024 debut "Light Will Come Our Way."

Available on 12" vinyl

LA post-punk group Cure For Youth arrive with their debut LP "Synthetic World" on à La Carte Records — twelve songs, thirty-five minutes, no fat. Scott Savarie, Catarina Teles, Connor McKenna, and Nicolas Sturz make hook-heavy post-punk pressed through enough reverb, chorus, and delay to widen the room without losing the snap of musicians who learned their phrasing in the pit.

Available on 12" vinyl

Detroit duo Johnstonsons — John River and Stonny Moon, lifelong friends operating under a band name that reads like a Lynchian fake ID — arrive with their debut full-length "Hard II Impersonate" on à La Carte Records. The name sounds more like a CB handle or a landscaping company than a synth-pop band, which is exactly what lets the actual record sneak up on you: a 28-minute new-wave/synth-pop LP that turns the gap between expectation and execution into part of the pleasure.

Available on 12" vinyl

Brooklyn synth duo Observation Room — Marina F and Chloe Olson — step out of the long shadow of their self-titled EP with "Superstructure," their debut full-length for à La Carte Records. It's the sound of a band figuring out how to make cold music feel warm: the cinematic synth-pop reach of Depeche Mode and Book of Love woven through the locked grooves of krautrock, the chromium pulse of late-'70s experimental synth, and the widescreen drift of Tangerine Dream. Deep and dreamy where their earlier work was brittle and hypnotic, the record builds out a small, repeatable system and lets every weird color inside it breathe.

Available on 12" vinyl

3 Poisons builds on that foundation while pushing boldly into new territory — weaving EBM influences into an emotional pop framework that feels simultaneously colder and more immediate. The result is a record driven by churning synths and deceptively simple guitar melodies that burrow in and refuse to leave, anchored throughout by Chris Liu's cavernous baritone.

Available on 12" vinyl

In Absence is the debut album from New York City's Stare Away, the solo project of Ben Nelson. Seven tracks of brooding post-punk and cold wave atmosphere, built from haunting melodies, shadowed soundscapes, and lyrics that sit somewhere between existential weight and melancholic beauty.

Available on 12" vinyl