Out100: Jana Hunter

Photography by Ryan Pfluger in Los Angeles on August 20, 2015. Styling by Alison Brooks. Hair: Ananda Tuyes. Makeup: Danielle Katherine.

The music of the 1980s looms large overEscape From Evil, the mesmerizing third album from Jana Hunter and her band, Lower Dens. But if the Baltimore group's latest channels New Wave titans like the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees, it also confirms Hunter's own status as a formidable force in gothic indie pop. The singer-guitarist's frigid tales of human yearning feel at once relatable and otherworldly, her delivery both fragile and commanding. She conjures lust, fear, and emotional catharsis like it's her calling. "If I play a really great show, there are moments where I'm so in it, there is no self," Hunter says. "That's the purest form of being I can think of."

SLIDESHOW | Out100 2015