Kevin Bronson on November 9th, 2018

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In 2015, singer-songwriter and vocal dynamo Alexa Melo released her self-titled debut album, a white-knuckle collection of pop and rock that made a distant memory the difficulties the then-20-year-old had experienced as a teenager signed to a major label.

Then fate intervened. Melo was forced to undergo emergency surgery on her vocal cords. “It got to the point where, if I didn’t get a vocal cord cyst removed, there would be irreversible damage,” she says.. “So the timing was terrible, but it needed to get done.”

She required a year of vocal rest. The Massachusetts-born, L.A.-reared singer moved to San Francisco in the summer of 2017 and slowly began to recalibrate. And last month, she returned with the EP, “Mute,” four songs of dark pop (in the vein of Meg Myers) that reflect what surely was a torturous struggle to get back on her feet. The highlight is the brooding single “Hollow.” In the latest of his series of visuals for the songs on the EP, videographer Daniel Garcia portrays Melo in a tunnel. There were moments during her ordeal where she probably didn’t see a light at the end of it, but “Mute” shows she made it.

||| Watch: The video for “Hollow”

||| Also: Watch the video for “Dope Sick”

||| Previously: “Bleach,” “Still Right Here”