Pickle Darling - Battlebots

Pickle Darling has always existed just outside of the periphery. In a heightened time of fast music, algorithmic consumption and rapid virality, Lukas Mayo (they/them) has remained focused on the album. Their discography is a reflection of their creative evolution, and they deliberately look for ways to push sonic boundaries from release to release. Since debuting with Bigness in 2019 followed by Cosmonaut in 2021, Mayo has curated a catalog that is deeply personal and strangely tactile, where tiny, unexpected details—an off-kilter loop, a whispered aside, the warmth of an old Casio—become as crucial as melody itself.

Their 2023 LP Laundromat was a precise and polished expansion of that world, a record that felt like it had been carefully placed behind glass. Battlebots, by contrast, is unruly and full of static: a collection of songs that feel like they could only ever exist on scratched CD-Rs passed between friends.