New Zealand artist Aldous Harding has a unique command of songwriting, lyricism, and her voice itself. Born Hannah Harding, she can manipulate her vocal tones to extreme lengths (her live performances reveal the way she distorts her face to achieve sounds that range from cavernously deep to tinny and childlike), and she’s a master of crafting large, often bleak atmospheres with minimal instrumentation and simple rhythms. After her debut album established Harding as one of New Zealand’s most interesting new artists, her devastating sophomore, Party, further confirmed her talents, particularly through crushing, stripped-down tracks such as “Horizon” and “What If Birds Aren’t Singing They’re Screaming.” Her third LP, Designer, took a different approach to the same thing, with brighter rhythms and bigger instrumentation forming an album that's lighter-sounding, but no less intense or intimate. “I just wanted to show that there are lots of ways to work with space,” she tells Apple Music. “Lots of ways you can be serious. You don’t have to be serious to be serious.”