Haunted By Colors

As ShadowBox, Brooklyn-based musician Bonnie Baxter plays murky, often unpredictable synth-based music that's more concerned with the mind than the dance floor. Debut EP Haunted By Colors comes at a time when the indie world is filled with gothic princesses eager to leave their mark: I recently played her standout track, the dusky dirge "AM," to a music journalist friend of mine, only to have him write it off as "post-Grimes." Personally, I hear more Austra or Zola Jesus in ShadowBox's brew, but that's beside the point. Throughout Haunted By Colors, Baxter repeatedly defies labels like "synthpop" and "gothic" via an experimental streak that suggests she's onto a more singular musical path. Throughout the six-song EP, she toys with spastic, Burial-like beats, glitchy, free-form outros, and ethereal vocal tangents that stray far from the territory blazed on "AM." It all ends with "Running Like a Ghost," a distorted, deformed two-minute folk song that's worlds removed from the record's outset.