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"We tried to challenge ourselves and make songs that excite us, often starting with ideas that push our comfort zones."

"Any time you have to explain your name, you're essentially apologizing for it," says Alexandra Watkins, the founder of naming firm Eat My Words. Her deal-breakers for names include 'looks like a typo' and 'hard to pronounce.'

The Sound It Made opens Two Wheels Move the Soul like the blaze is roaring to life before your eyes. Zack James' shifty drumming hammers out a drum 'n' bass redux like a panicked heartbeat while Carney Hemler's bass lurches in slow motion, replicating the gut drop of a horrible realization.

"It's slow music, the lyrics transmit good feeling and it's moody," said frontman Gustavo Raya Garcia following the album's release on March 26.

I don't even think words can describe it, but it was beautiful. I've been working on myself and my music for a really long time, so to finally just be heard and seen, it feels surreal.

When the band split, I just needed a break. I took five years but I got pulled back into music. It's been a struggle. That's the main thing. I want it to be great, but I've got the pressure of having been in R.E.M. and it's a high bar, because I want this to be as good as that, and that's near impossible.

Erving Goffman, the Canadian sociologist, built an entire framework around this in his 1956 work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. His argument was elegant and a little unsettling: social life is theatre. We are always performing. Every interaction has a "front stage" where we manage impressions, modulate tone, and curate which parts of ourselves are visible.

"When I read the fine print, it was 'an experience with REO Speedwagon's music.' It's none of the original members," Fletcher recalls. "I don't want to promote the show unless it's the real thing. I don't know why you would want to see that. It's just a cover band. To me, that's a little bit strange." He adds, with a sigh, "If there are no original members, who cares?"

In even the most straightforward Tanner Matt production, there's a moment where everything threatens to disintegrate. Since he began putting out leftfield house music in the early 2010s-working under aliases like Hashman Deejay, Studio Mody, and Ttam Renat, and in the groups Aquarian Foundation, Kinetic Electronix, and INTe*ra, among others-the Vancouver electronic musician has specialized in stripped-down tracks with shaky foundations and a sneaky dub underpinning.

Produced by previous collaborator Joe Chiccarelli (The Strokes, The White Stripes, My Morning Jacket), Make-Up Is a Lie was recorded at Studio La Fabrique in the Saint-Rémy-de-Provence region of Southern France. A press release describes the record as an exploration of "poetic and provocative lyrics" and "evocatively unpredictable instrumentation," with a title meant to be "an explicit call for unvarnished truth and expression."

As a teenager, your biggest concerns may include embarrassment in front of peers, family structural stability, and romantic relationships. As an adult, your biggest concerns are likely similar. Another teenage fear might be someone finding your journal, reading your deepest joys and terrors of personhood. The second album from Portland's Nonbinary Girlfriend realizes that fear, listening like an evolutionary confessional of what it is to be a human in the 21st century.