Letting down a loved one is a nasty business. First there’s apologizing. “Oh Ivy—so sorry Ivy,” sings Lucy Hunter of Opposite Sex. “I betrayed your trust/I’ll do anything you say if you’ll forgive me.” That sentiment, expressed on “Oh Ivy” from the band’s new album Hamlet, is harmless on its own. But the Dunedin, New Zealand art punks cultivate an unsettling vibe here. Hunter’s bass line anchors queasy and chaotic slide guitars. Her voice oscillates between mousiness, ragged screams, and quiet falsetto. There’s no good footing here—the sound is thick, sour, and always shifting.

Hunter’s apologies gradually become more and more self-destructive. She agrees to embarrass herself if it’ll make things better. Frantically, she offers to give up all of her most valued possessions: a guitar, her cat, her flesh, teeth, bones, fingers, toes, blood, and so on. Over five minutes, Opposite Sex go from sad regret to literally screaming and pulling their hair out in a futile effort to appease the person they love. As illustrations of desperation go, this one’s intense, but emotionally accurate.