More adventurous than some of her more celebrated peers, singer/songwriter/guitarist Mary Timony is a consistently creative force in indie rock. Her work with Helium on 1995's The Dirt of Luck showcased her tough yet vulnerable vocals and her expressive guitar playing, which combined her classical training and the alternate tunings of experimental rock and shoegaze into an elastic, explosive style. The prog-influenced sound of 1997's The Magic City informed her early work as a solo artist, and the bittersweet witchiness of her 2000 debut Mountains predicted the mystically minded artists who arrived later in the decade. Timony returned to a harder-edged style with 2007's The Shapes We Make, and by the mid-2010s, when her brash trio Ex Hex updated the sounds of glam rock, power pop, and punk on 2014's Rips and 2019's It's Real, she was widely recognized as an indie rock innovator and veteran. ~ Heather Phares