Plunge

Finally Fever Ray's sophomore album sees a physical release.

"Hey, remember me? I've been busy working like crazy," Karin Dreijer sings on Plunge, but even though Fever Ray's second album arrived eight years after the project's self-titled debut and five years after The Knife's Shaking the Habitual, there's no chance listeners could forget her. With both of those acts, Dreijer pioneered crystalline electronic sounds that became the blueprint for many acts during her absence.

However, Plunge reaffirms that she's still more fearless than most of her would-be peers. Even if it wasn't originally a surprise release, the album's title reflects how it feels like a sudden, total immersion in the unexpected. Dreijer got as much as she could out of pure darkness on Fever Ray; this time, she throws more light on her music, and it's stranger and brighter-sounding than it has been in years.

From the beginning, her solo music has carried a supernatural charge: Her pitch-shifted voice and chiming parallel fifths are enough to make the hairs on your arm stand on end, as though you had been visited by a ghost.