On “Faultline,” Girlpool embrace balladry. As they’ve moved from the rough-edged DIY sound of their earliest work to the heavier guitar of 2019’s What Chaos Is Imaginary, Harmony Tividad and Avery Tucker have evolved toward a less abrasive but equally immersive expression of sentimentality. Now, two years later, the duo turns to a smoothed-out, ethereal pop sound with the help of producer Yves Rothman, who’s worked with artists like Yves Tumor and Miya Folick. “Faultline” opens with a trickle of piano like a music box melody, and Tividad sings to us from on high while Tucker harmonizes. Behind the wispy, dreamlike vocals, slow-motion blooms of synth invoke the supernatural presences Tividad sings of: Angels, ghosts, crowding gossamer bodies.

It feels like Tividad is in danger of disappearing among them. She speaks of her body, but always as tethered to someone else: “Smiling for the camera, eyes closed/Doing anything you ask, I suppose.” Drifting between poetic images of stars and graveyards, she seems beholden to something, or someone, that threatens to erase her. The abstraction causes the song to feel beyond reach at times—until we arrive at the devastating closer. “I loved you so traumatically that I/Can barely lift the world you left for me,” Tividad sings. Girlpool’s dreamy confessions are also quietly damning.