The creative project of Portland-based frontwoman Lizzy Ellison (previously of Portland’s Radiation City), Cardioid flits between genres and tones with the sly, dexterous abandon of a woman in full control. Evoking the distorted guitar ballads of Angel Olsen one minute and the funky, mercurial art-rock of St. Vincent the next, her music is unstuck in time and edged with mist.

Tactile, industrial-strength dream-pop punctuated by flourishes of fuzzed-out guitar and retrowave synth, Ellison terms it “fantasy metal.” A tribute to the fluidity and tensile strength of these songs, it also refers to the fabled mithril J.R.R. Tolkien described in his chronicles of Middle-Earth: a silvery resource stronger and lighter than steel, coveted for its beauty and utility. Ellison’s gauzy, cinematic compositions are akin to this, built to last even as they slip elegantly free of any classification you could contain them to.