If you’re the type of person who pays attention to the Academy Awards, you may have heard about the controversy concerning the Oscars’ decision not to invite Anohni, the second transgender person to be nominated for an Academy Award, to perform her nominated song “Manta Ray” on the telecast. But even if your personal Venn diagram shows an overlapping of music and film interest, you may not have realized that Anohni is the artist formerly known as Antony Hegarty, leader of Antony and the Johnsons. Over the course of four studio albums, three live albums, and a fistful of EPs, the band trafficked in piano-driven chamber pop, occasionally expanding to work with symphony orchestras. But much as Antony was shown the door to introduce Anohni to the world, the Johnsons’ orchestral pop has been tabled in favor of electronic music on her debut album, Hopelessness (Secretly Canadian).

If you’ve followed Hegarty’s trajectory, the existence of Hopelessness seems inevitable. There were the collaborations with Björk and Hercules & Love Affair that showed placing that distinctive voice over beats worked remarkably well. Anohni has also benefited from existing in a world where the fusing of the disparate aesthetics of James Blake and The XX is a viable thing. Had there not been those steps before the appearance of this record, Anohni’s enlisting of Oneohtrix Point Never and Kanye West associate Hudson Mohawke to assist on co-production duties may have been more of a shock to the system. (Mohawke and Anohni also previously collaborated on a track on Mohawk’s Lantern album, “Indian Steps.”)

That said, Hopelessness isn’t a four-to-the-floor nu disco banger. There remain orchestral vespers of the the singer’s past floating just on the fringes. A song like “I Don’t Love You Anymore” could easily be recast by just removing the distorted drums, but Anohni fully embraces the glitches, bleeps, and beats in a manner that makes it seem as if she’s been fluent in the language the entire time. One would imagine that with a few savvy remixes, several tracks would be ready for the club, but here Anohni’s swooping soaring tenor is still the focal point, the unique instrument demanding attention no matter what else is going on.

Surprisingly, Hopelessness is unapologetically political—and not how you might expect. From the opening track, “Drone Bomb Me,” to songs like “Obama” and “Crisis,” Anohni is pulling no punches as she criticizes American foreign policy and comments on the surveillance state and environmental concerns. But while the album could be a huge heavy-handed bore, Anohni takes a cue from ’80s dance music by using a solid beat to help the medicine go down. Just when a song is getting bleak lyrically, a musical shift or a savvy bit of sequencing pulls it up. Still, it’s a dark album that doesn’t let the light shine through, but it also doesn’t undercut the message by becoming a parody of itself. Hopelessness is a mesmerizing and engaging reintroduction to an artist we thought we knew.