In today’s alternative landscape, some of the most intense, profound, and emotionally honest proposals are arriving at the hands of women exploring darkness from very different places. They do not do this as a pose or an aesthetic choice, but as an expressive space where songs burn on a slow fire, voices crack, and atmospheres that demand active listening take precedence.
We are not talking about a hermetically sealed musical scene, nor do they respond to a specific genre. What unites them is a way of understanding music as an emotional and almost physical experience, where the voice carries the central core and where the intimate, the spiritual, or the unsettling become creative material. Chelsea Wolfe, Emma Ruth Rundle, or Lingua Ignota are some of the most visible names of this sensibility, but they are not the only ones. This female genealogy goes back a long way, and today it finds new and radical ways to manifest itself.
Ground Zero: Voices that paved the way
Before the current explosion, there were pioneers who took the female voice out of the pop canons to take it into other territories:
- Nico: With the Velvet Underground or solo, her deep, icy voice and her album The Marble Index are the origin point. She transformed singing into something sensual and avant-garde.
- Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins): It is impossible to understand current atmospheres without her. Her way of singing broke with the idea of the voice as a simple transmitter of messages, turning it into pure texture, giving us the mold for dream pop.
- Diamanda Galás: If Fraser is the mist, Galás is the darkness with no escape. Experimentalism as a way of life.
- Jarboe: The duality between angelic beauty and industrial brutality in Swans or her collaborations with Neurosis, with an almost tribal commitment.
- Lisa Gerrard (Dead Can Dance): Her ritualistic approach to neoclassical music proved that the solemn and the ethereal could be deeply moving.
The voices of the present
Chelsea Wolfe: The darkness that entraps
For many, the gateway to this universe, with a career of almost two decades behind her. An enveloping aura and gothic tone with heavy guitars, electronic bases, and a voice that moves between the vulnerable and the threatening. There is something cinematic in her records, featuring nocturnal and magnetic scenes. If she were a photo filter, she would be “Dramatic Cool.”
Where to start: “Pain is Beauty” (2013) or her most recent “She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She” (2024)
Emma Ruth Rundle: Without raising her voice
The best-kept secret. The goal here is not to envelop, but to draw close through a singer-songwriter formula that isn’t afraid to unleash the electricity to underpin the impact. Intimate and contained songs that range from folk to dream pop, making specific stops at post-metal in her collaborations with Thou or Red Sparowes. If she were a character from Twin Peaks, she would be the Log Lady.
Where to start: “Marked for Death” (2016)
Lingua Ignota: Black Mass
Fear and terror. Kristin Hayter signs one of the most extreme and experimental proposals of recent years. The approach here is strictly for the die-hards, shifting from whisper to scream via a neoclassical lens with songs that stretch to the point of asphyxiation. Beauty and the beast, all in the same shaker. If this were a scene, it would be the secret society gathering from Eyes Wide Shut.
Where to start: “Sinner Get Ready” (2021)
Ethel Cain: The Preacher’s Daughter
Right now, at a peak of popularity, Ethel stands out for her ability to tell stories. Her songs and lyrics are pure dark narrative set in a rural America marked by religion, guilt, and trauma. Unlike other proposals, her sound is more accessible and melodic, moving within the codes of slowcore and dream pop, with notable stops in drones that function as interludes or as core pieces of her works. If she were a painting, obviously, she would be American Gothic.
Where to start: “Preacher’s Daughter” (2022)
Anna von Hausswolff: Solemnity and trance
Also in a sweet spot career-wise, listening to the Swede Anna von Hausswolff is to enter a space that burns slowly, supported by monumental organs and drone sounds that hypnotize. The proposal does not push with aggression, but rather submerges you in a ritual repetition that demands total surrender from the listener. Situated between post-rock and darkwave, it is also another more accessible option, especially in her latest work. If she were a movie, she would be Midsommar, but in autumn.
Where to start: “Iconoclasts” (2025)
Julie Christmas: The body as an instrument
Julie takes expressiveness to a physical and visceral plane. Her way of singing is explosive, theatrical, and at times, almost violent. She does not seek classical beauty, but liberation through twisting songs via abrupt rhythm changes and a constant tension that is fundamentally structured through post-metal, which hit its ceiling in her collaboration with Cult of Luna. If she were a relative of Björk, she would be the evil twin living in the basement.
Where to start: “Mariner” (2016) (with Cult of Luna)
Other nuances: Zola Jesus and Nicole Dollanganger
The spectrum widens with Zola Jesus, who has fallen off the radar a bit, but who still constructs a powerful, architectural darkness through her operatic and electronic touch, and Nicole Dollanganger, who brings a perverse contrast of tone: an extremely sweet, high-pitched voice narrating stories of violence, decay, and brutal rawness in the purest style of Picnic at Hanging Rock.
The Spanish scene
This sensibility is not exclusive to the Anglo-Saxon world. In the Spanish-speaking context, we find artists working these textures with an identity of their own:
- Maud the Moth (Amaya López-Carromero): Probably the clearest link to the avant-garde of Galás. Her music is a fascinating cross between dark piano, neoclassical, and traditional folk.
- Sara Zozaya: Works from an emotional minimalism of intimate, fragile atmospheres and silences that weigh as much as her layers of sound. Her latest EP, Attä, is a gem.
Coda: Listen slowly, listen differently
Although this has been a mixed bag of genres, perhaps it is more appropriate to speak of a form of listening rather than a specific style. The songs of these women have in common that they are not designed to be consumed quickly. In exchange, they offer spaces and emotional narratives that grow over time. Given the current landscape, saturated with rapid stimuli, these voices propose the exact opposite: lower the RPMs, dim the lights, and let yourself go. Right now, when noise and immediacy sweep everything away, it is more necessary than ever to reclaim and highlight a way of making music that, through these voices and female concerns, gains more strength and value than ever.