Kississippi Mood Ring LP

The night before an L.A. recording session, Kississippi's Zoe Reynolds spotted a flashy billboard ad for an auto repair shop; "Get In Tune," it read, an imperative that felt like a call to connect and a call to get better. It took her mind to Bruce Springsteen's iconic garage-set video for "I'm On Fire", and almost immediately a new song began to take hold. With bubbly synth pads, atmospheric guitar swells, stacked harmonies and drop-out-ramp up drum beats, "We're So In Tune" captures the synchronous excitement of new relationship energy in vibrant waves of sound, crashing and receding like an uncontainable impulse.

"A couple people have commented on how it's NOT in tune," Reynolds jokingly remarks, citing the Lorde-ian, shout-along gang vocals behind the chorus. "But it doesn't have to be; I wasn't in tune with that person, either."

The song serves as the bar-raising first song on Mood Ring, Reynolds's second full length as Kississippi and first for Triple Crown Records. Like its opening track, the album is full of her trademark talent at channeling deadpan emotional observation into poignant musical metaphors. Kississippi comfortably filters pop grandeur, emo's deliberate rawness, and Nashville's studio largeness through a lens of punk camaraderie. Just like the album's title suggests, Reynolds writes through a spectrum of shifting emotions: elation blending into insecurity and back around into gorgeous awe.

Mood Ring boasts contributions from producer Andy Park, illuminati hotties' Sarah Tudzin (including "Get In Tune" and the '80s-inspired synthesized dance-along "Around Your Room"), Los Angeleno writer and producer Derek Ted (on three songs, including the sparkling, explosive guitar groover "Heaven"), as well as Phoebe Bridgers' frequent sideman Marshall Vore (on the heartbreaking, spacious "Hellbeing").

The supportive trust between Reynolds and her collaborators - as well as her new team at Triple Crown - helped bring Kississippi's songs and arrangements to great new heights. While Reynolds' sure-footedness with synths, drum machines and pop hooks may seem like a departure from Kississippi's earliest days, Reynolds promises, "I feel the emo and punk presence everywhere on this record." Her adeptness at honoring and combining the musical styles she loves has resulted in an abundant album full of heart, humor and honesty. Gazing back at juvenile lust with the precision of hard-won wisdom, it's a giddy joy to be enveloped in Mood Ring's sweeping sounds and sincere sentiment.