Merwulf is a Portland trio that makes a surprising amount of noise with limited instrumentation. There’s no guitar. Just distorted bass, keyboards, drums, and a stubborn commitment to seeing how much can be said with as little as possible.

Formed in 2022 by bassist and songwriter Merri Garcia with longtime friends Misty and Larry R., the band’s songs address grief, technology, politics, and impostor syndrome. Some are funny. Some are devastating. A few manage to be both.

Their sound is built from dirty bass lines, swirling keyboard textures, tom-heavy rhythms, and lyrics that tend to arrive in fragments rather than explanations. Reviewers have called the results cinematic, adventurous, magical, slightly mad, and difficult to describe succinctly. The band considers all of these apt interpretations.