“I’m generally a pretty happy person,” says Ryan Walchonski of Baltimore-based electropop band Aunt Katrina. “But negative emotions tend to come out in my songwriting because it’s the easiest way for me to express them.”⁠ ⁠ On auntkatrinadc's debut album, This Heat is Slowly Killing Me, out on July 11th, Walchonski grapples with torrential waves of existential dread and social anxiety, losing himself in his own intrusive thoughts. It’s a stark lyrical contrast to the work Walchonski did with his previous project, feeble little horse, a band he formally left in March in order to pursue work as a solo artist. But the two projects do share a similar sonic skeleton: Aunt Katrina, which features members of snailmail, make off-kilter, noisy guitar pop is rammed with earworm hooks, a perfect balance of happy-doomed. ⁠ ⁠ Heavily influenced by the likes of Aphex Twin and Four Tet, his experimental rock songs bear a digitally-damaged sheen of ambient breakbeats and warped synths.⁠ ⁠ Read our int...