Out100: Jana Hunter

Photography by M. Sharkey

To fashion her second album with her psych-rock band, Lower Dens, Baltimore singer-songwriter Jana Hunter drew from a time-honored sonic palette: late-'70s/early-'80s European minimalism, Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Iggy Pop when he collaborated with Bowie. Excellent benchmarks, of course, but the spaced-out, atmospheric music on the widely acclaimed Nootropics -- in particular its exhilarating krautrock-inspired highlight, "Brains" -- inhabits its own world. It's not ours, and it's all the better for it.

Photographed at Sun Studios in New York City on September 21, 2012

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