Alright we need to talk about IC3PEAK's album До Свидания (2020) and the videos they released last year. Follow the thread:

In 2018, they released the album Сказка with songs on social themes. Смерти Больше Нет (Death No More) has Nastya Kreslina singing from the perspective of a riot squad member, facing the Lubyanka jail-headquarters of the FSB (Federal Security Service).

The videos published on YouTube have subtitles with the lyrics translated to English. In this song, they have verses such as these: "Together with others you will be twisted in the square" and "I go outside to caress a cat while a cop car runs it over".

Because of such commentary, in the fall of 2018, both IC3PEAK and a number of other independent Russian performers started having trouble with Russian local security forces cancelling their gigs. You might have seen this in the news https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/02/28/russia-censorship-younger-generations-music#:~:text=Authorities%20in%20Nizhny%20Novgorod%20pressured,their%20performance%20at%20a%20third.

But IC3PEAK political stand is not featured only in their songs. Nastya was photographed during a protest against the isolation of RuNET, an attempt of Russian government to isolate its Internet segment from the rest of the world. https://meduza.io/en/episodes/2020/02/07/runet-sovereignty-how-russia-is-trying-to-isolate-its-internet-segment-from-the-rest-of-the-world-maybe

And the commentary on militarism grew stronger as they released the video for Марш (Marching) in 2020. There's a clear connection to the times of the URSS, but since they were both born in 1995, it's less about the past and more of a contemporary alert

For this new album, they kept the same B&W aesthetics + soviet and folk references. I'd need more time to study this carefully, but basically there's this conflict between old/conservative values and a new generation that can't and doesn't want to fit in.

IC3PEAK also came to Brazil for a gig and they recorded the video Go with the flow in São Paulo. They feature some artists from the Brazilian LGBTQ+ underground scene, which says much about their position on Russia's persecution of queer people.

Why their music is important:
1. Police violence and oppression against minorities are nothing exclusive to their native country;
2. If you like Grimes and Die Antwoord, for instance, but have trouble with their political agenda;

3. If you like folklore but don't want to catch up with conservatives appropriating these symbols for fascistic ends;
4. If you like witch house and want to keep up with the genre;
5. Because you are goth af but also trendy and political

Pros meus lindos brasileiros, uma ótima leitura semiótica do trampo deles https://www.comunidadeculturaearte.com/ic3peak-era-uma-vez-e-nao-era-uma-vez/