SPRINTS Letter to Self (City Slang) — The Irish quartet Sprints had a couple well-regarded EPs on their discography before going into the studio with their favored producer, Daniel Fox, and their first full-length feels like a band that was revving their engines is now tearing down the highway at top speed. Letter to Self, the album is question, is so potent that one simile won’t do, so let’s also note that it hits like a cannonball. The band’s frontwoman and chief songwriter, Karla Chubb, has spoken of the cathartic qualities of this album’s material, and that comes through in the punk-fueled fervor of the tracks. “Ticking” has a welling intensity, and “Shaking Their Hands” shares some of the seething iciness of Girls Against Boys back in their heyday. The band is ultimately too sly to settle for simply pummeling the listener. So much of what’s on the album has a shapeshifting craftiness that’s as intoxicating as a belt of whiskey. “Heavy” takes the post-punk of Savages and adds a hint of Wet Leg’s cheeky disaffection, and “Can’t Get Enough of It” is as if Siouxsie and the Banshees spliced their DNA with Soundgarden’s. Through it all, Letter to Self is as pure and raw as a primal scream. P.S. You should also try the following tracks: “Adore Adore Adore,” “Literary Mind,” “A Wreck (A Mess),” and the title cut.

MARIKA HACKMAN Big Sigh (Chrysalis) — For her first full-length album in almost five years, English singer-songwriter Marika Hackman openly shares her unsettled feelings. The songs on Big Sigh fairly tremble with discomfort as Hackman peels back every protective layer she has. “Blood,” which sound a little like boygenius when they go spectral, is emblematic of Hackman’s skill at descriptions that subtly discombobulate: “Oh, you’re so much bigger now/ See my brow is blistered nylon/ All your pain I’m holding off/ Can you feel my breaking arms?” If the specifics are elusive, the language still scrapes like bone on bone. Most of Big Sigh exists among the sonically understated — “Vitamins” is like Chelsea Wolfe in a mode of drifty stateliness — but Hackman occasionally swirls up some Cat Power–like pulsing intensity, as on “No Caffeine” and “Slime.” The real kindred spirit is Hackman’s one-time tourmate Laura Marling, with “Please Don’t Be So Sad” standing as the clearest echo. Like Marling, Hackman operates with uncommon artistry. In addition to the tracks already mentioned, go Big with the following: “The Ground,” the title track, and “The Yellow Mile.”