Poughkeepsie is an eccentric American art-pop record built from the language of mid-century popular songwriting, 1960s pop, jazz harmony, singer-songwriter music and homemade indie recording. Its twelve songs move between comic character pieces, melodic pop, instrumental music and increasingly introspective songs about perception, communication and uncertainty. Familiar verse-and-chorus structures conceal unusually active harmony, while dry, conversational vocals and deliberately unvarnished production keep the music from becoming precious. The lyrics move constantly between the mundane and the grand—socks, kitchens and failed romances share space with wave functions, infinity, propaganda and vestal virgins. What initially sounds whimsical gradually reveals a consistent preoccupation with the unreliability of stories people tell about themselves and the world. The result feels less like retro pop than an individual musical vocabulary assembled from a century of popular-song traditions.