Lyrically it’s rich — not the usual rock tropes. Buswa roots the songs in Anishinaabe heritage, in intergenerational trauma and the tug of not just surviving but telling something true. On “Off-Rez” she skewers the tokenization of Indigenous identity (“They want 2000s Buffy Marie, they want the pipe and the drum”), and in “Wrong Planet” she nails that alienation: “It’s getting harder not to feel so abandoned.” These aren’t throwaway lines — they hang, insist on your attention.

Standouts? Start with “Deadhorse,” the opener whose first line (“How do you stop someone from rising through the ceiling?”) sets the album’s tone of longing, escape, submission. “Cellophane” charges in with post-punk energy but knocks you off balance with “Save me, White Jesus,” daring and fragile. Then there’s “Mountains,” subtle and ambient as memory creaks open, and “Earth Eater,” the closer, where Buswa’s voice sounds raw and maternal ghosts stir in the background. The album peaks and guts you.

Critics have noticed: the interplay of identity and catharsis, production and spirit, has resonated. There’s a boldness here that doesn’t feel contrived. Ribbon Skirt deliver songs that could’ve been coded protest anthems but instead feel like intimate transmissions from within the noise.

What makes Bite Down stand out is its refusal to choose between loud and quiet, or between politics and feeling. It holds both. It’s not about tidy answers — it’s about presence. Presence in trauma, in culture, in story. And that presence, in 2025, feels radical.

If you’re listening for something that walks between shards of memory and the floor of a dance-punk show, that challenges what indie rock can hold, this album is worth your time. It’s messy, beautiful, vulnerable — and live, I expect it will hit even harder. So pull it on, turn it up, and let yourself get lost for a little while.