[3] Lyrically, the album's central theme stems from Creager's experience of having her computer, website and social media accounts hacked by an identity thief.

She addresses this experience metaphorically on songs found throughout Unknown, which Creager has referred to as her "most personal album".

[7] She compared this approach to the one she employed when composing the band's first album, Thanks for the Ether (1996), saying "I used to write songs on paper just from my own thoughts as opposed to 'Google it!

As the hunter gloats in his trophy room, the unicorn laments being a "pathetic, broken down pony" with a "gory wound on [her] face", and is left distraught over the loss of her magic.

[3] On "Psychopathic Logic", Creager comments on the ordeal directly by describing the perpetrator as someone who is blind to real human interaction, living instead through a fantasy on a video screen.

"Emily Dickinson Trophy Letter" finds the eponymous poet and the Wizard of Oz fighting over the ownership of a bowl of pudding, with the argument eventually devolving into a masked wrestling match.

[8] "Pastoral Noir" finds the Roman goddess Vesta in search of her lover, a shepherd named Tony.

[14] Unknown was promoted by a thirty-three date tour of the U.S. beginning at The Parish in Austin, Texas on July 23 and ending at the House of Blues in New Orleans, Louisiana on Halloween.

[6] In his review of the album, Falling James of LA Weekly referred to Creager's "real-life horror of losing much of her life's work to a particularly invasive and controlling stalker" and said that "her new songs might be disguised with typically cryptic titles [...], but an unsettling sense of dread and mystery unfolds with every dark rustle of those feverishly restless cellos".

[4] Meanwhile, Geoffrey Plant of Weekly Alibi said that "while [it] doesn't rock as hard as some of the previous Rasputina releases, the durable and more avant-garde Unknown is of the highest cello-rock quality".