"Chris Pureka's How I Learned to See In the Dark opens with ""Wrecking Ball,"" a slow-burning ember of Americana folk, ingrained with the timeless tones of an old acoustic guitar. Pureka's haunting singing contrasts with her lilting inflections. The result is a husky texture that is somewhat similar to that of Jesse Sykes or Mary Gauthier. On ""Broken Clock"" her voice rests more organically in a higher register, allowing for a natural tremolo during the more impassioned moments of the song's choruses. Pureka identifies herself as a “genderqueer” (falling outside the gender binary) and has cultivated an androgynous appearance, though her songs generally focus on the darker pockets of human emotion and interaction, rather than LGBT issues. The gripping and eerie dirge ""Hangman"" explores sound topography with untraditional percussion, such as scraping wood and clanging chains. In other moments like the beautifully desolate ""Landlocked,"" the E and A strings of her guitar provide an ample rhythmic foundation, even when a brushed snare drum seeps into the middle of the song. "