This Is Our Jam: Austra, “Beat And The Pulse”

“Beat and the Pulse” is dark and elegant and really, really sexy. It also sounds a little bit dangerous, like it could nicely play over the club scene in Black Swan. Austra’s Katie Stelmanis has a voice that recalls The Knife/Fever Ray’s Karin Dreijer Andersson, the woman who's done more to define the current resurgence of goth than any other artist. Yet Stelmanis makes music that's more hook-filled than anything The Knife have released since Heartbeats back in 2003. Time will tell whether Austra take their sound further toward mainstream pop or follow their Swedish electro-goth godheads into weirder, darker territory. One thing's for sure—you won't find Austra concert tees being sold alongside "goth" fingerless gloves at Hot Topic.