St. Vincent

St. Vincent is the recording name of Annie Clark, a Berklee-trained guitarist whose music fuses meticulous art-pop songwriting with abrasive, heavily processed guitar tone, a combination she has said reflects a self-described debt to Sonic Youth, Jimi Hendrix, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Clark's relationship to some of her most frequently cited comparisons is more complicated than it appears — asked directly about Kate Bush, whose influence critics have repeatedly assumed, she has said she doesn't feel she's carrying on that specific tradition, pointing instead to Stravinsky as a more direct reference point on some of her records even while praising Bush's own technical craft in detail.

Strange Mercy (2011) sharpened Clark's combination of pop songcraft and guitar dissonance into some of her most widely praised material, its arrangements pairing genuinely pretty melodic writing with bursts of distorted, almost violent guitar that refused to let the prettiness go unchallenged. The album marked a significant critical high point in Clark's career and established the tension between beauty and abrasion as the defining feature of her songwriting going forward.