With American Tomahawk, Adam Halferty makes some of Denver's most beautiful, captivating music. His spartan yet soaring songs burn bright — but once your eyes adjust to the shower of sparks, you realize that those gorgeous melodies illuminate some truly horrific and harrowing shit lurking in the crevices. Like shards of glass baked into hard candy, the lyrics — which reportedly reflect on a child-molester neighbor from when Halferty was growing up in the Ozarks — are unflinching, unnerving and incisive. And "1993," which debuted last year, was particularly stunning: "Poor rotten soul with no hope, forgot your name/Young little boys on their knees in your house/Did you make men of them?" The chorus pivots on the lines "No one will know, get them while they're young. You're free," before resolving into the last verse: "Now you're touching the dog and smelling your hands and fucking your sister/Pissing the bed and hiding the sheets and scared of the future/In a house in Missouri is where they found your body."