Kimya Dawson

One way or another, our worst fears demand confrontation. Dawson faces her mother’s illness armed with a precociously childlike, I-can-stare-down-death sing-song, fumbling at an acoustic guitar as bells chime like comforting pixies, screwing up her courage and holding tears in check. “There’s something in her blood/And there’s something in her leg/And there’s something in her brain,” she wearily states, as though the expression of these facts can make things all better again.