Photo by Harry Wohl

Artist: Prewn, the songwriting moniker of Izzy Hagerup

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Buzz: Prewn currently resides in Los Angeles, but make no mistake about it — her sound is very much born out of the rapturous quiet that is the understated beauty of Western Massachusetts’ wonderfully weird, cantankerous underground rock scene. Those who have been there since day one of Izzy Hagerup’s journey have been witness to her supernatural power. Her energy can rearrange the surroundings of basements, barn shows, and everything in-between into her own vacuum into her soul where a blown-out, widescreen world of guitars creaking, whirling feedback and noise, crumbling, rumbling drums, beguiling synths, and broken symphonies move as one under the commandeer of her voice.

Every turn is an unexpected, creeping up from behind you much like those intrusive thoughts that cross the wires throughout her sophomore effort, System. In an indie rock era where your choices are either the current alt-country du jour or middling melancholic ’90s revivalism, Hagerup — like her former Northampton roots — are an uncompromising example of distinct style, contorting riffs and forcing distortion to bend in her favor and rendering the emotional weight in her music with a specificity to its sound that feels fully in sync with the personal.

Though the album was properly recorded in Los Angeles, you can’t take the seasonal depression darkness of a Western Massachusetts autumn and winter out of the artist who created it. She describes the album as a “private journal made public,” which definitely informs the rawer edges being able to bloom without the need to prune. You hear that on standouts like its unraveling title track, the muck of “Dirty Dog”, and the black hole of “Cavity”. Ironically, the song entitled “Commotion” is one of the steadiest of its unnerved listens, and one that — alongside the turvy heartache of “Forgot” — could make Fiona Apple ripe with envy. That Prewn’s wordsmith humor is ghastly within it all as well makes her breakthrough one that will haunt in any room.

Sound: A recurring existential breakdown inside of a Shelburne Falls Coffee Roasters that keeps happening no matter which location you go.

Recommended: “System”, “Dirty Dog”, and “Forgot” from her recently-released sophomore album, System

Prewn’s System is available now on Exploding In Sound Records.