Front page photo by Kristian Emdal

Brooklyn-based label Sacred Bones has put in a decent shift for the cold wave cause, releasing archival work by acts like Trop Tard and bringing things up to date by issuing albums such as Led er Est’s 2012 LP The Diver. Vår, a group of four Danish musicians that includes members of Iceage and Lower, pick up on that bombed-out synth strand for “The World Fell,” a track from their upcoming Sacred Bones full-length, No One Dances Quite Like My Brothers (out May 14).

It’s stern and unrelentingly hardened in its worldview, ultimately sounding like the work of musicians who have been far more bruised by life than they should be at this point. There’s an authoritarian air that permeates throughout, making it feel like you’re an observer in a gritty state-of-the-world address that Vår are laying out, where all four members are fully committed to a form of compelling bleakness that has grabbed hold of them.