Photo by Harrison Whitford

It’s impossible as it is attempting to avoid the discourse surrounding Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker individually, but as the combined force known as boygenius? You can’t. “$20” is the first of three singles most everyone has unanimously agreed is the early highlight of their debut full-length (a major label debut, at that…,) The Record. Perhaps that’s because Julien Baker is the most elusively low-key of the trio, having quietly sat in the background over the past year beyond touring while Bridgers baits accidental celebrity, and she and Dacus continue to amass larger audiences through their music, performing, and engaging across every known social. This makes Baker’s emergence from their return with something different within the trifecta’s harmony in its punkish jolt and still-humble indie roll all the more a reprieve from the pop content sad-uration we’ve come to expect otherwise…

boygenius’ The Record will be released March 31st on Interscope Records.