Category: Indie Electro Pop

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Paris’ Superjava Shares A Breezy, Hook-Driven Bop

Paris-based electro rock outfit Superjava can trace its origins back to when its founding duo Archi and Alex met in 2015 while they were studying at Berklee College of Music. Upon graduation, they relocated to Paris, where they met the band’s then-third member Arnaud. Although the band has gone through a lineup change, the members of the Parisian outfit — currently Archi and Arnaud — have managed to spread their music around the world, as a result of several global advertising campaigns.

After the release of several EPs, which were supported with tours in France and China in 2019, the duo recently released their highly-anticipated full-length debut, Get Sick, Get Better. Drawing influence from the likes of Phoenix, Justice, Jamaica, Air, Cassius, MGMT, Empire Of The Sun and Foster The People among others, the album sees the band embodying the spirit and feel of a new wave of French Touch while featuring elements of rock, pop and electro pop.

“Slowdown,” Get Sick, Get Better‘s latest single is a breezy bop featuring glistening synths, a strutting bass line and the pair’s unerring knack for crafting remarkably catchy, rousingly anthemic hooks. While seemingly indebted to Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix-era Phoenix and Oracular Spectacular-era MGMT, “Slowdown” to my ears, also subtly brings Tame Impala to mind, too. And at its core, the song is anchored in a much-needed reminder that we need to slow down and just enjoy the moment — whether it’s with our dear ones or just by ourselves.

Directed by Jules Salters, the accompanying video for “Slowdown” features the duo wandering the French countryside while being part of a pleasant psilocybin trip or while wandering a slightly alien yet familiar world — or perhaps even both.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Virginie B Shares Sleek and Breakneck “Astral 2000”

Virginie B is a rising, Montréal-based self-taught singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and self-described “extravagant mess” influenced by a wide range of music, including experimental electronic music, classical, old-timey jazz, 90s R&B, art pop, art rock and more. The French Canadian artist and her collaborator and co-produced Louis Jeay-Beaulieu have received attention across the province and elsewhere for crafting a unique take on hyper pop that incorporates elements of nu-jazz, funk and R&B with a refined conceptual approach informed by art pop. 

Thematically, her work is informed by her studies in psychology and sees her exploring her psyche, femininity and her relationship with technology and nature. For the rising French Canadian artist, her work is an outlet which she expresses her desires and excesses with an unvarnished honesty that reflects her vulnerability and confidence, while not taking herself too seriously. 

The rising Montréal-based producer and artist collaborates with a number of local acts including  Super Plage, Maggie Lennon, Georgette, Félix Dyotte and Marie-Gold among others. 

Her full-length debut, 2022’s INSULA garnered praise from ICI Première, Le Devoir, La Presse, Montreal Rocks!, and PAN M 360, which led to a nomination for Pop Album of the Year nomination at 2022’s GAMIQ.Adding to a growing profile, Virginie B played sets across the provincial festival circuit, including Francofoiles de Montréal, Coup de Cœur Francophone, Le Phoque OFF, Santa Teresa Festival, Taverne Tour, 2022’s M for Montréal — and last year’s SXSW. 

The Montréal artist’s highly-anticipated sophomore album Astral 2000 is slated for a Friday release through Bonsound. Reportedly, her Bonsound debut is at once quirky and accessible, visceral and sophisticated, synthetic and deeply human with its songs exploring conflicting personal themes: Throughout the album, the rising Montréal-based artist wavers back and forth between her love of nature and fascination with new technologies, her longing for lazy days and the urgency of her mortality, her desire for simple pleasures and need to perform (and to be)in the spotlight, her relationship with her femininity, her desires and the resulting excesses.

Conceived alongside producer, multi-instrumentalist and longtime collaborator Louis Jean-Beaulieu, Astral 2000 is one of la belle province’s first hyper pop albums. The album’s latest single, album opener and title track “Astral 2000” is set during an escapist night out, partying at a karaoke bar. Anchored around a breakneck BPM, thumping kicks, glistening and blocky synth arpeggios, “Astral 2000” is meant to evoke a white-knuckle ride through a wild cycle off partying, the pressure to perform and the soul-crushing search for authenticity through the perception of others. But throughout, Virginie B’s coquettish melodic delivery is a sharp and almost playful contrast to the song’s breakneck nature.

Directed by Rosalie Bordeleau, the accompanying video for “Astral 2000” is an homage to Wong Kar Wai and Sofia Coppola, meshing the two influences to evoke a woozy and dizzying sense of solitude. Flashing between intimate karaoke jam with friends, a motorcycle race through tunnels and a disorientating night-time wander through the city, the Montréal-based artist seems to find herself both isolated and connected to the world and people around her.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay TR/ST Shares Brooding and Uneasy “Performance”

Toronto-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and producer Robert Alfons is the creative mastermind behind the acclaimed JOVM mainstay project TR/ST. For well over a decade, Alfons has captivated audiences with a unique blend of dynamic vocals, emotive lyrics and late night sensuality. 

Alfons’ fifth TR/ST album, the TR/ST and Nightfeelings co-produced Performance is slated for a Friday release through Dais Records. The album’s title alludes to a friend’s offhand remark about the Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based artist’s intrinsically performative nature. Recorded in Los Angeles, the album’s material reportedly seethes with dread, lust, reckoning and abandon. Sonically, the production pair achieved a thick, smoky balance of eerie synths and fog machine low end paired with bruised, crooning vocals. The result is an album of material that moves between beauty and bitterness, rousing anthems and crushing anguish rooted by emotional turmoil, the lingering ghosts of guilt and the memories of those wronged and those still unforgiven. 

Alfons’ voice is the anchor in the storm, singing a collage of impressions and confessions with a smeared, stream of consciousness logic. He’s both observer and instigator, performer and playwright, liberated by the stage and the night.

Last month, I wrote about the Cecile Believe and Nightfeelings co-produced “Dark Day,” an ethereal yet uneasy track featuring eerily atmospheric and glistening synth arpeggios, skittering industrial clang and clatter serving as a foggy and unsettlingly brooding bed for Alfons’ bruised and aching vocal. “I think there’s something in the song about the flashes that come to you when you try to fall asleep, flashes that show you where you have unfinished business,” Alfons says of the song. “It was such a pleasure working with Cecile Believe and Nightfeelings on production for this track.”

Performance‘s latest single, album title track “Performance” continues a run of brooding and uneasy material, anchored around a foggy, strobe-lit fueled production featuring bursts of glistening synth arpeggios, skittering, reverb-soaked beats. Alfons’ aching and bruised delivery ethereally floats over the menacing soundscape.

Directed and edited by Bryan M. Ferguson and featuring cinematography by George Harwood, the accompanying video for “Performance” follows Alfons as he arrives at a grim karaoke bar. While he’s lost in his own performance, the sparse crowd is lost in their thoughts. You can almost feel the despair through the screen.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: RYAL Shares a Dance Floor Friendly Bop

JOVM mainstays RYAL is a New York-based synth pop duo that features:

  • Jacque Ryal, a producer, singer/songwriter, keyboardist and pop artist, who first emerged into the local scene as a member of pop outfit Strip Darling. When she first stepped out as a solo artist, she started out crafting Portishead-inspired trip-hop. 

  • Aaron Nevezie, an in-demand producer, engineer, mixer and songwriter, who has worked across a wide range of genres and styles, primarily out of Brooklyn-based Bunker Studio. Nevezie works with acts sculpting sounds and honing arrangements rooted in a passion for creative sonics informing musical performances. He has extensive work in composing and arranging electronic music with a focus on analog modular synths.

The JOVM mainstays have received attention from the likes of The Best Line of Best Fit, Time Out New York, LadyGunn, Popdust and elsewhere.

The duo’s latest single “On The Inside” is a hook-driven, early 80s-inspired disco synth pop tune that recalls Evelyn “Champagne” King‘s “I’m In Love,” Prince‘s “U Got the Look” and a few others. It’s the sort of song that should get you up to the dance floor or the rolling skating rink — unless you’re somehow soulless and dead.

The duo explain that the song is about how good vibes come from within, and that it’s ultimately up to you to have a good time. Let that be a reminder y’all.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Aramis Teams Up with Jules Vert on Flirty “Baby”

Founded and led by Québec-based singer/songwriter, musician and producer Urhiel Madran-Cyr, the alt pop/electro pop project Aramis can trace its history back to when Cyr along with two classmates and friends in CEGEP, a Québécois […]

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: STOLEN Shares Brooding “Drown With Me”

Formed back in 2010, STOLEN is a pioneering and award-winning, Chengdu, China-based electronica quintet that specializes in a high-energy, dance floor friendly sound that features elements of techno, darkwave and post-punk. 

Since the release of their full-length debut, 2015’s Loop, the Chinese outfit has built an international profile: Through collaborations with renowned brands like Hermés, Burberry and BMW, they’ve managed to merge their unique sound with current fashion trends. And adding to a growing international profile, they opened for New Order during the British New Wave legends’ 2019 European Union tour. 

The Chengdu-based outfit will be embarking on a UK tour in October. The tour will feature newly remastered old and new tracks with enhanced avant-garde VJ visual effects, which promise to be a jaw-dropping live performance.

Earlier this year, the Chinese outfit released the Remanufactured EP. The EP’s latest single, EP closing track “Drown With Me” is a slow-burning, brooding track featuring brief bursts of twinkling keys, atmospheric synths paired with yearning and eerily ethereal vocals. Sonically, recalling Trentemøller’s “A Different Light” and Goldfrapp’s Tales of Us, “Drown With Me” is a gorgeous yet uneasy dream.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Bohemian Cristal Instrument Shares Gorgeous Teaser for “New Nature”

Splitting her time between Los Angeles and the Czech Republic, the Czech-born singer/songwriter, producer and musician Lenka Moravkova is the creative mastermind behind the indie electro pop project My Name Is Ann and the solo experimental electro pop project  Bohemian Cristal Instrument. 

The Czech-born artist hails from the Bohemia region of the Czech Republic, a region famed for its glass industry. Inspired by the region’s history, Morakova created several striking multimedia installations based on the sound of local glass factories during their decline. Those installations also helped inspire and inform the Czech-born artist’s Bohemian Cristal Instrument project — and the unique instrument at the center of the project. 

In the early 1950s, siblings Bernard and François Baschet developed a new instrument, the Cristal Baschet. With a Cristal Bachet, metal rods are embedded into a heavy plate to form the elements. Each metal rod is accompanied by an attached glass rod. The metal rod’s length, weight and position at the equilibrium point help to determine the sound’s pitch. The player gently strokes and/or rubs the glass rods with wet fingertips. Moravkova’s Bohemian Cristal Instrument is a unique version of the Baschet’s Cristal Baschet that follows the Czech-born artist’s original design. With her unique instrument, the Czech-born artist creates immersive and hypnotic soundscapes that pair the otherworldly acoustics of the Bohemian Cristal Instrument with ambient and pulsating electronics and her vocals. 

2017-2019 was a busy, breakthrough period for the Czech-born artist: In 2017 she went on her first European tour, which included a one-off collaboration with William Close and The Earth Harp Collective as a headliner at that year’s Colours of Ostrava. She performed at a TEDx Talk and with Grammy-nominated artist Bora Yoon at Los Angeles’ The Broad Museum. Live footage of Moráková in the California desert went viral, amassing over two million views. 

UNICODE EP, Maravkova’s Bohemian Cristal Instrument debut was released in 2018. The following year, she performed at Eurosonic Nooderslag. She was shortlisted for SXSW twice — back in 2020 and in 2022. 

Maravkova’s latest single, the slow-burning “New Nature” is the first single from her upcoming Bohemian Cristal Instrument full-length debut. “New Nature” continues a run of dreamily ambient yet remarkably cinematic and gorgeous material. Featuring gently oscillating synths, broodingly ambient electronics, twinkling keys and the lush theremin-like tones of Moravkova’s unique instrument, “New Nature” according to the Czech-born artist is set in a post-human world, where technology, humanity and nature are all merged to create a new unity. While the song acts as the soundtrack to a post-apocalyptic landscape, it offers a sense of a bright, hopeful future.

Along with the single, Maravkova shares a breathtakingly gorgeous video teaser, which manages to evoke the hopeful and futuristic sweep of the accompanying cinematic song and her gorgeous Bohemian Cristal Instrument, suggesting that she becomes one with her instrument.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Bohemian Cristal Instrument Shares Cinematic “New Nature”

Splitting her time between Los Angeles and the Czech Republic, the Czech-born singer/songwriter, producer and musician Lenka Moravkova is the creative mastermind behind the indie electro pop project My Name Is Ann and the solo experimental electro pop […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Geneva Jacuzzi Shares Sultry and Swaggering “Laps of Luxury”

Geneva Jacuzzi is a Los Angeles-based multimedia artist, whose immersive and unhinged performances are considered legendary: they often involve a psychotropic gallery of masks, costumes, confrontation and massive art installations. Her recorded music frequently features catchy hooks and cryptic moods dusted in 4-track grit. 

Earlier this year, the bedroom darkwave stalwart., multimedia artist and performer signed to Dais Records, who will be releasing her third full-length album Triple Fire on Friday.

In the lead up to the album’s release, I wrote about the following tracks:

“Dry,” a brooding and swaying bit of 80s retro-futuristic synth pop anchored around layers of glistening analog synth arpeggios and skittering beats paired with catchy, razor sharp hooks. Jacuzzi’s seemingly detached vocal singing lyrics about disconnection and uncertainty ethereally float over the dreamy arrangement and production. 

“I took a little break from writing music and when I sat down at home to record, ‘Dry’ was the first song to burst out,” Jacuzzi recalls. “The music came together so instantly it’s as if it had been waiting and perfecting itself for years in the ether. The chorus lyrics came that same week after I went on a date with Mike Judge and he never called me back (haha). I wasn’t upset or anything, but I had never been ghosted before and couldn’t help but equate modern love to an appliance you buy on the home shopping network.”

“Scene Ballerina” Triple Fire‘s third single continued a run of remarkably period specific, 80s inspired synth pop, with the song featuring glistening and arpeggiated synths, tweeter and woofer rattling 808s and catchy hooks serving as a lush yet dance floor friendly bed for Jacuzzi’s expressive vocal. Sonically seeming to nod at a synthesis of Jane Child, I Feel For You-era Chaka Khan and Larry Levan house, “Scene Ballerina” describes a very specific, attention craving personality that many of us have come across at some point or another. 

“We all know that person: The Scene Ballerina. Stirring up a whirlpool of drama. Leaping to the center of the spotlight, spinning lies, twisting stories. All for attention,” Jacuzzi shares. “A tragic character. I can name a few ;)”

“Laps of Luxury,” is Triple Fire‘s fourth and final, pre-release single. And as the album opening track, it sets the template for the album’s sound and aesthetic while standing out on its own. Featuring skittering boom bap, glistening synth arpeggios and strutting synth bass paired with Jacuzzi’s sultry, siren-like cooing, “Laps of Luxury” is a strobe-lit, goth-leaning club banger that’s seemingly indebted to Pet Shop Boys, Yaz/Yazoo, New Order and early Depeche Mode.

“‘Laps of Luxury’ is one of my favorite tracks on Triple Fire,” Jacuzzi says. “We spent the most time perfecting it in the studio. I was listening to a lot of Pet Shop Boys at the time and wanted to capture the light/dark ghostly dreamscape of castles and discos from another time. The lyrics are quite haunting and vague. The character is escaping in a car late at night. Processing the experiences that flood her mind and recounting them to the driver. ‘I’ve seen so many things/no one should ever see’… What did she see?!?! Poor thing. Obviously something unspeakable. One could only imagine.”

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Bearniez Shares a Slickly Produced, Hook-Driven Bop

Bearniez is an Indonesian-Italian singer/songwriter and sound engineer, whose travels to the major metropolitan areas across the globe has influenced her ability to mix multiple elements from different genres and cultures in her work.

Her latest single, “Safari Motion” is a slickly produced, hook-driven bop featuring dense layers of glistening synths, skittering beats, bursts of squiggling funk guitar a sinuous bas line that serve as a lush bed for Bearniez’s plaintive pop starlet delivery.

According to the Indonesian-Italian artist, the song describes the her creativity as a sort of jungle, a chaotic world of colors, beauty and danger. As you get older, imagination and creativity are supposed to be boxed and put away. The expectation is that you must follow the pragmatic, “adult” path. But the song talks about not letting external pressure to make you “grow up” and stop being creative or imaginative.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Bear Hands Shares Comically Menacing and Catchy “Adderall/Ambien”

Brooklyn-based dance punks Bear Hands — Dylan Rau (vocals, guitar), Val Loper (bass) and TJ Orscher (drums) — formed back in 2006. They gained early attention with 2010’s “What a Drag,” which led to the trio signing with Cantora Records, who released their full-length debut, that year’s Burning Bush Supper Club. 2014’s sophomore effort Distraction was a critical and commercial success with the album reaching #23 on Billboard‘s Heatseekers chart. The trio followed up with 2016’s You’ll Pay For This and 2019’s Fake Tunes. 

The band’s Dylan Rau relocated to a tiny town on the Oregon coast in 2019, where he made an attempt to step back from music, spending his time “chopping some wood and learning how to use power tools.” For Rau, those activities proved to be passing fancies, the adopted passions of a five-year role playing game as a different person. “I don’t really know how to stop writing songs,” Bear Hands’ Rau says. “Even if no one is listening or we have no team or infrastructure supporting us, I like to think we’d be like those graffiti artists who paint in the subway tunnels where no one will ever see it.”

New songs were shaped was shaped remotely over the following few years between band members on opposite coasts.

Along with producer, collaborator and touring guitarist Alex Marans, the band reconvened in Cherry Hill, NJ for in-person recording sessions fueled by generic pharmaceuticals and a persistent fear of irrelevance. Marans wrote some guitar leads and also prepared elaborate breakfast scrambles on most mornings. Finishing touches were put on by co-producers Elliot Kozel and Caleb Wright.

“The record is mostly about trying to keep it together when it’s already fallen apart, learning skills that no longer have any applications today and true and total pointlessness,” the Bear Hands frontman explains. “Kinda like singing into the void to see if we hear anything back, but your headphones no longer connect because the void updated its hardware and doesn’t have an aux jack anymore.”

“This album was a heavy ass lift and took forever to get done,” Rau adds. “Some of the songs are five years old and have changed a lot since inception. Being the only person on the West Coast meant we had to work through email or have intensive face-to-face sessions when I would go to Philly for a week or whatever. That kind of time sensitivity can make things kind of volatile emotionally.

“If you just get a little something done on most days, you’ll eventually reach the finish line. Maybe,” he adds. “Or at least we did.”

Slated for an October 18, 2024 release through the band’s long-term label home Cantora Records, The Key To What will feature the previously released “Intrusive Thoughts,” a track that features glistening synth stabs, a sinuous bass line and percussive, skittering, twitter and woofer rattling thump paired with stream-of-consciousness-like lyrics that capture the irritation, confusion, self-doubt, self-flagellation and doubt of intrusive thoughts with an uncannily precise psychological detail.

“’Intrusive Thoughts’ is the song that’s playing in my head all day and I can’t get it out,” Rau explains. “Not that I really want to. Well sometimes I do when I’m trying to do basic math or pick a restaurant to eat at with my girlfriend. I think I wrote it about being bored of everything and feeling dissatisfied with everyone and everything around me. Not that I’m super misanthropic in general but this song might make you that way if you get it stuck in your head so watch out.” 

“Adderall/Ambien,” The Key To What‘s latest single is a mind-bending electro slog featuring woozy and glistening synth arpeggios, swirling and ambient synths, skittering and plinking beats, a Gorillaz-like acoustic guitar-driven bridge paired with Rau’s dreamily distracted falsetto delivery and a pitched down vocal for the song’s ridiculously catchy hook and chorus. The effect is a song that feels like a pleasant trip that has suddenly taken a comically menacing left turn. Drugs are good — until they’re bad, y’all. And sometimes, the bad can be interesting. “This song chronicles a personal history with drugs and includes a discussion of which ones will ruin your life and which ones will make life worth living,” Rau explains. He further notes, “Your mileage may vary!”  

Directed by Rau, along with old friend and acclaimed photographer Christopher Saunders and producer Ursula Strauss, the accompanying video for “Adderall/Ambien” was conceived as a more malevolent sequent of their video for 2014’s “Agora.” The video follows the band’s Rau, seemingly alternating between both opped up and listlessly tuned out, doom-scrolling, watching TV. Rau says “the visuals for ‘Adderall / Ambien’ paint a portrait of life in the grip of addiction and isolation whilst also having a pretty good time.” 

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms
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Live Concert Photography: The New Colossus Festival, Super Bock and 18th Ward Brewing Presents Summer Saturdays at 18th Ward Brewing 7/27/24 feat. Sue Your Landlord, Ava Raiin, Kira Skye, Minaxi and Hit

Live concert photography of The New Colossus Festival, Super Bock and 18th Ward Brewing Presents Summer Saturdays at 18th Ward Brewing 7/27/24.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Nessi Gomes Shares Brooding and Cinematic “Moving Mirrors”

Guernsey-born and-based singer/songwriter Nessi Gomes is a Channel Island-Portuguese singer/songwriter, whose work draws from both sides of her ethnicity, the essence of the traditional, emotional Fado of Portugal with British modern, progressive pop.

Gomes’ full-length debut, 2016’s Diamonds & Demons received airplay and critical praise across the European Union and the UK, and was supported by touring across 30 countries that included stops across the major global festival circuit, as well as major stages.

Simultaneously, she created the growing Vocal Odyssey workshop and retreat series, which encourages participants to meet with the spirt of their voice. And since creating it, thousands of participants have experienced the process under her guidance.

Over the past seven-and-a-half years, Gomes and her work have amassed over 70 million streams across the major DSPs. However, her latest single “Morning Mirrors” marks a change in direction sonically and aesthetically. Featuring buzzing bass synths, strummed acoustic guitar, skittering beats and percussion, bursts of twinkling electronics, “Morning Mirrors” is a built around brooding Portishead-meets-Kid-A-era Radiohead-like production that serves as eerily lush and cinematic bed for Gomes’ soulful crooning.

Gomes explains that this own is a unique and experimental piece that fearlessly confronts toxic femininity while exploring themes of jealousy, comparison and the painful consequences they bring. “The song reflects my personal journey, reflecting light on the challenges faced when experiencing both sides of the coin,” Gomes says. “It uncovers the unconscious insecurities of some women who seek validation by tearing others down. ‘Morning Mirrors’ is a powerful call to challenge these destructive patterns and strive for a culture of support and empowerment among women. It advocates for empathy, understanding, and the need to foster a community where women uplift and empower one another.”

Directed by Yuval Nobelman and Alon Daniel, the accompanying video for “Moving Mirrors” was filmed in Guernsey on 16mm film, and features dancers and actors, who like Gomes are residents of the island battling each other in a WWE-styled battle royal.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstay TR/ST Shares Brooding and Foggy “Dark Day”

Toronto-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and producer Robert Alfons is the creative mastermind behind the acclaimed JOVM mainstay project TR/ST. For well over a decade, Alfons has captivated audiences with a unique blend of dynamic vocals, emotive lyrics and late night sensuality.

Alfons’ fifth TR/ST album, the TR/ST and Nightfeelings co-produced Performance is slated for a September 13, 2024 release through Dais Records. The album’s title alludes to a friend’s offhand remark about the Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based artist’s intrinsically performative nature. Recorded in Los Angeles, the album’s material reportedly seethes with dread, lust, reckoning and abandon. Sonically, the production pair achieved a thick, smoky balance of eerie synths and fog machine low end paired with bruised, crooning vocals. The result is an album of material that moves between beauty and bitterness, rousing anthems and crushing anguish rooted by emotional turmoil, the lingering ghosts of guilt and the memories of those wronged and those still unforgiven.

Alfons’ voice is the anchor in the storm, singing a collage of impressions and confessions with a smeared, stream of consciousness logic. He’s both observer and instigator, performer and playwright, liberated by the stage and the night.

Performance‘s latest single, the Cecile Believe and Nightfeelings co-produced “Dark Day” is an ethereal and uneasy track featuring eerily atmospheric and glistening synth arpeggios, skittering industrial cling and clatter serving as a foggy and unsettlingly brooding bed for Alfons’ achingly bruised delivery.

“I think there’s something in the song about the flashes that come to you when you try to fall asleep, flashes that show you where you have unfinished business,” Alfons says of the song. “It was such a pleasure working with Cecile Believe and Nightfeelings on production for this track.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Malcolm Lally Shares Heartfelt and Anthemic “Graves”

Malcolm Lally is an emerging Galway-based singer/songwriter and producer, who specializes in a sound that blends the nostalgia-inducing elements of indie pop, R&B, synth pop, electro pop and EDM with contemporary production.

Lally’s highly-anticipated EP UV will feature lead single “Graves,” a slickly produced pop anthem featuring acoustic and electric guitar, glistening synths, incredibly catchy, rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses serving as lush bed for Lally’s yearning delivery and heart-proudly-worn-on-sleeve earnest lyricism. Sonically, “Graves” seems like a seamless and hook-driven synthesis of The Weeknd and Tears for Fears.

Thematically, “Graves” explores universal themes of longing and loss that touch all of us, as we navigate the various comings and goings of those were old dear, with the song being a reminder of the enduring impact our dear ones have on our lives — even after they’ve departed. The song is also an important reminder to cherish the memories of everyone who has touched your life, regardless of the circumstances that may have had you separated from them.

In “Graves,” Lally explores the universal themes of longing and loss that touch us all as we navigate the comings and goings of those we hold dear. The song serves as a poignant reminder of the enduring impact that individuals have on our lives, even after they have departed. It encourages listeners to cherish the memories of those who have touched their lives, regardless of the circumstances that may have separated them.

“This song is a reflection of the deep connections we form with others, and the impact they have on us long after they are gone,” Lally explains. “It’s about honoring the memories we carry with us and recognizing the profound influence of those who have shaped our journeys.”