Y’all know I’m a sucker for good, innovative and infectious synth pop. Primer, aka Alyssa Midcalf, paints those qualities in spades on her sophomore album Incubator, out today via Egghunt Records. There are a whole host of tracks I could have chosen to feature here in a standalone post, but I’m definitely a fan of the most recent single “Feel The Way I Do”.

The whole record is steeped in a synth tone that’s distinctly 80s, with sawtooth timbre and dramatic melodies abound. It’s not fully drenched in the oblivious 80s sense of jubilation, with many songs breaking down or shifting into sourness from time to time, but there’s a notable spectrum of emotion spread throughout the 10 tracks – it’s not just “hey! let’s party! do you hear that synthesizer and bass??”. “Feel The Way I Do” is held together by a throbbing, low synth tone, but opens up into a grand hall of arpeggiated synthesizers, twinkling piano and sweeping vocal melodies in the chorus, and just gets bigger as the song reaches its end. Seriously – there is A TON of synth pop out there that pull on the same batch of sonics, the same batch of melodies, the same batch of tropes. Incubator dares to shake things up to some degrees and I thank Midcalf for that.

Primer’s Incubator is out today via Egghunt Records. Listen more + buy via Bandcamp HERE.