🎵 Emma Ruth Rundle — “Catherine Wheel” Emma Ruth Rundle’s new cut “Catherine Wheel” (from These Killing Times) is a welcome return. It’s good to still have artists of this darkwave-adjacent stripe around — Rundle, Chelsea Wolfe, Marissa Nadler, and the heavier end of Zola Jesus — people who can make gloom feel precise instead of theatrical. Her vocal here has that Tori Amos tilt: piano-room intimacy, a little quaver, then a sudden lift into something more pointed. She’s maturing fast with every record; the writing is tighter, the band hits harder, and she sounds less like she’s circling a feeling than driving it. The arrangement benefits from the album’s string writing — violin and cello don’t swamp the groove, they just widen it when the song opens up. A solid, slightly sardonic track that sits well in her catalog without trying to be the statement piece.