One year after Gia Margaret released her 2018 debut album, There’s Always Glimmer—an introduction to the serene mix of folk, ambient, and shoegaze that she called “sleep rock”—the Chicago-based musician developed a vocal injury that cost her the ability to sing. Having lost her physical voice, Margaret honed her artistic one, developing a new creative language through intimate compositions of mostly synthesizer and piano across two albums whose absurd and deadpan titles (2020’s Mia Gargaret, 2023’s Romantic Piano) belied the music’s nuance and sensitivity. You might write off the title of her fourth album as another bit of tongue-in-cheek genericism, but this time, there is pathos in its matter-of-factness: For the first time since her debut, Margaret is singing again. In the process of writing and recording Singing, the musician underwent a journey of personal and creative rediscovery, reconnecting with parts of herself that felt long-lost, while applying the lessons she’d learned during her period of voicelessness. She channels quiet alienation on “Everyone Around Me Dancing,” evoking the feeling of being alone at a party over soft piano, glowing synths, and a lonely trumpet. Her voice pushes against a cloud of distortion on “Alive Inside,” on which she stares out at Lake Michigan and sends a prayer to “whatever’s there, a god, a friend that’s gone, a spirit.” But in her subtle compositions that blend live instrumentation with electronic textures, warmth and light stream through the cracks. Recorded in London with Frou Frou’s Guy Sigsworth, “Good Friend” is buoyed by unpredictability—think turntable scratches and Gregorian chants. And on “E-Motion,” where she’s joined by Kurt Vile and Deb Talan of The Weepies, Margaret asks her love a question that’s crushing in its deceptive simplicity: “Will you sing me anything? Anything you want.”