For Tracy Hyde, 'Undulate'

For Tracy Hyde has spent the past 10 years making the sort of charming, gossamer songs that could soundtrack wistful daydreams. The Japanese dream-pop outfit's current lead singer, eureka, always finds a way to infiltrate layers of guitar fuzz, suffusing caverns of reverb with a delicate sensitivity. You can hear that across "Undulate," the rhapsodic opener to the band's sixth album, Hotel Insomnia. As drums tumble into colliding guitar riffs, her voice cuts through all noise to reveal deeply-held convictions. She looks to the cosmos, filled with awe as she longs to see and understand the unknowable.

Mastered by Ride's Mark Gardener, "Undulate" sounds as if the British shoegaze band were making Radiohead's "Air Bag," though neither group has a voice that embodies childlike wonderment like eureka's. And as Mav's bass dances amid revving guitars, it feels like we're being launched into space, leaving the stratosphere to find a new home among the stars.

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