Adelaide expat Romy Vager was an outsider when she arrived in Melbourne in the mid 2010s. After her first local band failed to find traction, she founded the makeshift Romy Vager Group and immediately tapped into some serious magic. Swimming in reverb and other brooding textures, RVG paired Vager’s frayed yet resounding voice with classic nocturnal guitar pop lodged between The Chills and Echo & The Bunnymen. While “A Quality of Mercy”—the title track of their initially self-released 2017 debut album—took inspiration from how justice had failed Australia’s imprisoned “Bali Nine”, other tracks reflected Vager’s personal experience as a trans woman. The quartet has only sharpened since then, delivering the damning romantic post-mortem “I Used to Love You” and the striking family portrait “Alexandra” with equal conviction on 2020’s Feral before doubling down on tension with the Spoon-worthy strut of “Nothing Really Changes” on 2023’s Australian Music Prize-winning Brain Worms. It’s not all darkness in the world of RVG though: “It’s Not Easy” and 2024’s “Don’t Take It Badly” betray a dreamy uplift in both melody and spirit. Like all the best chroniclers of emotional truth, Vager recounts it with passion and precision going hand in hand.