Madi Diaz has a talent for brief, yet devastating observations: “Looking at who you are and what I can live with/I can imagine myself as a picture of something different,” she whisper-chokes on “Hope Less,” the situationship-rationalizing opening track to her seventh album. The lyric’s power is heightened by the arrangement surrounding it — just Diaz and her acoustic guitar, in a room so silent its settling is nearly audible. The same goes for much of Fatal Optimist , which largely eschews the more robust instrumentation of 2024’s Weird Faith in favor of stripped-down recordings that thrust her lyrics to the forefront.

Diaz, a songwriter’s songwriter who has spent time in Harry Styles’ backing band, began working on Fatal Optimist after a post-breakup seclusion on an island, wher

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