The deeper we get into this new wave of shoegaze, the more you may have already started to wonder: do these band’s even know what they’re doing with those effect pedals? At some point, smashing down on feedback and dredging up reverb is going to get you found out that there’s nothing behind that wall of sound for aesthetic sake if you keep going to the same well one too many times of shrouded whispercore. mo dotti, more than most of their peers on the rise, definitely do not fall victim to these pedal-pushing sins.

Since 2020, the four-piece of vocalist and guitarist Gina Negrini, guitarist Guy Valdez, bassist Greg Shilton, and drummer Andrew Mackelvie have been humbly doing their own thing in the Los Angeles underground without much paid attention from ongoing discourse and social media trends outside that space. Instead, they’ve been perfecting their nuanced blend of noise and pop over two extended plays that trigger those extra special sensory-inducing chemicals vividly through their turbulent spinouts. opaque, their debut full-length, is that perfection realized in full as well as the mark of a band who understands how to bend their instruments in ways that the shoegaze gods intended.

Despite its title, a balance of exhilarating aggression and transcendent serenity through its static shimmer hits from all directions and everything in between. The rippling chem trails of “lucky boy” and distortion afterburn of “whirling sad” pique the former, while Negrini’s soft vocal focus throughout the blurred wash of sun streaks on “pale afternoon” and the baggy, rhythmic ebbs of “wasted delay” levitates your head above the clouds. Between those points, mo dotti explore the intermediary of them all, where the flow from dream state into lucidity with “wave goodbye” and the subsequent passion prism of “carnelian” is like being momentarily privy to an unlocked altered zone of cosmic energy.

Emotions, color, scenery, and the speed of sound travel in varying facets held within opaque. Perhaps the reason why no other light is let through is because mo dotti’s shoegaze of substance radiates out so much no matter the medium of melody.

Highlights: “pale afternoon”, “whirling sad”, “wasted delay”

mo dotti’s opaque is available now.

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