"Radiation", a bold, recent single from the D.C. post-punk trio Priests, offers a modern take on the debilitating waves of energy that have often seeped into song. It sounds like hell, and it should. Frontwoman Katie Alice Greer, who is also in Chain and the Gang, builds an all-caps, near a capella articulation of the anxiety, paranoia, and fear that come with living among the invisible toxins infiltrating life on Earth today, from actual radiation to inbred advertising you can't evade.

Over a small thud of slow, tense-as-fuck percussion and screeching guitarwork, her monologue grows riotous. Greer screams of avoiding television rays but realizes that, today, screens are inescapable, before tearing through all contours of her voice on the savagely monstrous ending of "RAD-I-ATION." Resistance is hard when you can't even see the societal poision you should be fighting, but Priests, earning their religious name, offer a vision of 2013 to believe in.

[from "Radiation" b/w "Personal Planes" out now via Sister Polygon]