Zorked (adj.) - what happens when you end up thunderbaked, as in extremely stoned–or in any situation where you feel not sober. You can feel so tired you’re zorked. In fact, any state, so long as you’re a little out of it, qualifies. And Julia Shapiro, of Chastity Belt, Childbirth, and Who Is She?—much like everyone on this earth with a pulse—was zorked on more than one occasion in 2020. In March, she packed up her things and traded Seattle’s late-winter gloom for the perennial sunshine and seemingly endless opportunity of Los Angeles only to be forced into near-total isolation. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, she began working on her second solo album, Zorked, On the resulting batch of songs, we’re given Julia’s vision of Los Angeles: a wasteland melting in slow-motion, a place to commune with ghosts and warped legacies. 

Spiral XP is a Washington state-based five-piece led by Max Keyes of Versing. Drawing from a lineage of shoegaze and guitar-heavy alt rock, Spiral XP melds fuzzed-out, hazy instrumentation with minimal lead riffs to create bright, spiky pop. They released their debut EP Drop Me In through Peaceful Tapes, a new Vancouver Island-based label run by Courtney Garvin (The Courtneys, Gum Country).