Category: indie rock

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Sandhouse Shares Atmospheric “Into Nothing”

Rising London-based indie duo Sandhouse — Anna Sutherland and Casper Holloway — have developed a musical language that comes from a wide-ranging exchange: The duo first bonded over dance music, soul and Arthur Russell, and still spend much of their studio time playing music together. Their ambition is to make guitar music that carries the feelings they find in hyperpop, rap, soul, dance music and film soundtracks. “A lot of our process is creating a powerful sound and then trying to figure out how to make it human, or find the complexity within it,” they explain. “Or creating something very vulnerable and then adding the power to it.” 

Sandhouse’s debut EP, last year’s Circus has amassed over 5 million streams on Spotify while subsequent singles have received press from The Line of Best Fit, DIY Magazine, Rolling Stone UK, Dork Magazine, Under The Radar, The New Cue and others, as well as airplay from BBC Radio 1, BBC 6 Music and BBC Introducing, where they had a single named “Track of the Week,” Adding to a growing profile across the region, the band has built a reputation as a must-see live act, playing sold-out headlining shows at London’s Corsica Studios, The Lexington and Peckham Audio, along with opening slots and tours with Dove Ellis, PORIJ, she’s green, MOULD, swim school, Bleach Lab, and Panic Shack.

The rising London duo’s sophomore. Casper Holloway-produced EP Pollyanna was released today through Broke Records. The EP’s title is derived from Eleanor H. Porter’s optimistic heroine, while exploring the impulse to keep believing in someone despite mounting reasons not to. For the duo’s Anna Sutherland, writing became a way to take back control of experiences that had left her feeling powerless, shaping the material’s lyrics and her vocal performances. “Writing this music was part of a healing process and a way to untangle all the complicated feelings that arise from escaping from a terrible situation,” the duo’s Anna Sutherland explains.

She adds, “We often talk about the songs being spells or me having magical powers. For the vocal recording for parts of the EP, I imagined I was a giant monster that was part woman part crow when I stepped up to the microphone.” Reading Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid” and accounts of succubi and sirens, alongside conversations about Fullmetal Alchemist fed into that imagination. Across Pollyanna, the desire to disappear into romance sits alongside the urge to become something powerful enough to escape it.

Much of the EP was written and recorded across the last half of 2024 and early this year. EP title track “Pollyanna” and “Into Nothing” emerged during a writing retreat on an estuary in Suffolk, UK with Jay Flew with further sessions taking place at Sandhouse’s studios and alongside Ben Hillier in Lewes, UK. The EP features Joel Kovoor (drums) and Anthony Boatright (bass) on EP tracks “Snapdragon” and “Gasoline” while Ben Beed appears on “Pollyanna” and “Into Nothing.” Jake Burgess (lead guitar, tape machine and contact-mic experimentation) contributes to “Into Nothing.”

Sonically, the EP sees the band pairing warped indie rock with surreal, visceral imagery, grunge-inspired guitars, bleary trip-hop production, warped psychedelia and nocturnal alt-pop and Sutherland’s seductive yet darkly playful lyrics.

Pollyanna EP‘s latest single “Into Nothing” is a slow-burning tune that’s a woozy blend of trip hop, shoegazer textures and alt pop paired with Sutherland’s yearning delivery. Thematically, the song explores what can be lot in the pursuit of an idealized version of yourself. The duo’s Sutherland says, “‘Into Nothing’ is about the performance of modern beauty, and the self-reduction that occurs in order to conform.”

The duo has a handful of live dates, including an appearance at this year’s London Calling. Check out tour dates below.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Always You Returns with Breezy Yet Tense “Eye to Eye”

Los Angeles-based duo Always You — twin brothers Christoph and Anton Hochheim — have managed to forge their own path while working alongside a hive mind-like collection of musician friends, including Beach Fossils, Wild Nothing, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, MGMT, Jerry Paper, The Depreciation Guild and a lengthy list of others, which has helped shaped the siblings sonic identity along the way. Formerly known as Ablebody, the Hochheim Brothers have spent their careers exploring lo fi hypnagogic laptop pop, sophisticated synth pop informed by 80s UK and Japanese New Wave, as well as kitsch-en sink lounge ballads inspired by the great chansons.

The Los Angeles-based duo’s third album, the Jack Tatum-produced Against The World is slated for a November 13, 2026 release through Hit The North Records. With Jack Tatum at helm guiding production and mixing, he tirelessly broke down and then reconstructed all the elements of the material with the twins, pushing the album’s overall sonics to the absolute breaking point while still retaining their signature sophtisipop sheen. Throughout the album’s run time, heavy guitars and bending sheets of white noise clash over frenzied hi-hats and The Prodigy-like sub bass. Abrupt starts and stops seemingly crash down with the weight of the world. Drum ‘n’ bass and house beats thump over soaring melodies and chopped up vocal samples. The ballads seemingly sparkle with more heart and tension than anything in their previously released work.

Thematically speaking, Against The World is a statement for and against the times: a manic manifesto drawing a line in the sand, pointing out that love is the only resistance against the forces manufacturing distance and endless dissent between us. It’s a rallying cry pushing for something better, a staunch refusal of the status quo, fueled by the belief that we all deserve much better. The album’s material is rooted in the deep sense of longing for something, hell, anything else than this — a different reality, an alternate timeline, anything. Increasingly divorced from the world around us, the false promises of a new lover, a new leader, a quick and seemingly effortless salutation or a new savior become impossible to resist. That fantasy leads us further and further underground, leaving miles of rubble in its wake and keeping us all just out of reach.

Against The World will include the previously released “1994” and the album’s latest single “Eye to Eye.” “Eye to Eye” features glistening synths and uptempo, footwork-like breakbeats paired with a supple baseline beneath ethereal vocals. But beneath the breezy atmosphere, the song possess a simmering anger, as the song explores the feeling of resentment on the brink of rage.

“I usually try to avoid writing from an angry perspective but ‘Eye To Eye’ is explicitly that,” the duo explain. “I suppose it’s about being in a pressure cooker of simmering resentment, where belittling comments stack up until you feel like the walls are closing in on you and efforts to self-soothe and self-centre are all in vain. The only moment of harmony is in impending separation which becomes a fantasy one wouldn’t dare act on. It’s draped in a somber atmosphere but propelled with aggressive breakbeats to help punctuate that frenetic headspace.

“The video by Skellyot portrays Anton dressed as Death chasing me through an abandoned mall,” the duo says of the accompanying video. “We, in turn, were running from security the entire video shoot, sneaking through backdoors and hidden passageways to remain out of view while Skellyot followed closely behind in a pair of bright orange roller skates with light-up wheels they bought from the one store still open in the mall.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Norway’s The Clumps Share Anthemic “Easy”

With the release of last year’s “Worthless,” Norwegian rock outfit The Clumps have quickly exploded into the European and global scenes. “Worthless” has amassed over 3.3 million streams and over 100,000 monthly listeners since its release. Adding to a growing profile, the band’s previously releases have received national radio airplay on NRK P3 and P13 and they’ve began to make a run of both the national and European festival circuits, playin sets at Norway’s Bergenfest and Tons of Rock, as well as Eurosonic and London’s Soho Calling.

The band recently signed to AWAL, who released their latest single “Easy.” “Easy” is a slick, arena rock friendly blend of grunge, shoegaze, and indie rock, anchored around a pop-leaning sensibility and earnest, seemingly lived-in lyricism. The band explains that the ne single explores the psychological toll that’s often behind pursing something you care about deeply — the pressure, the exhaustion and uncertainty that are often flattened into the the idea that following your passion should somehow feel effortless.

The band’s highly anticipated sophomore EP is currently slated for release next year. But in the meantime, the accompanying video, which was shot, edited and directed by Filip Glezgo set at a presumed training session that quickly goes awry when the trainer seems to completely lose his mind, while seemingly daring his trainee how badly they want the job.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Trinket Shares Woozy, Hook-Driven “If Not Soon Then Now”

Formed back in 2023. Brooklyn-based indie duo Trinket — Lightheaded‘s and Betty Brite‘s Madison Kate Profitt and S.C.A.B.’s Sean Carmargo — have quickly carved out their own corner of the local indie scene with their […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: On Le Ore Shares Punchy “Backroom Deal”

Split between NYC and Nashville, On Le Ore — Jon Moore (vocals, guitar), and longtime Guided by Voices producer and engineer Travis Harrison (drums) — specializes in what they dub mid-fi indie rock that’s unpolished and a bit damaged, anchored around grimy guitars, crooked, off-kilter hooks, blown out melodies and recordings that leave the seams and bolts showing.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the band cites Guided by Voices. Pavement, Sugar, MJ Lenderman, Hotline TNT and Weird Nightmare as influences and sonic references. I’ll leave that one up to y’all. Everyone’s ear is different. Their latest single “Backroom Deal” is a punchy tune that showcases their knack for punchy, off-kilter yet remarkably catchy hooks and rousingly, anthemic, shout-along worthy choruses paired with distorted guitars and equally punchy vocals. And at the core of the song is a soulful, heart-proudly-worn-on-sleeve earnestness.

The accompanying video by Dunkel features a slick collage of old-time stock footage, the digital binary code and fuzzy footage of the band’s Jon Moore playing and singing the song, further emphasizing the song’s gritty nature.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lisa LeBlanc Shares Strutting and Funky “Too Many Cooks”

Acclaimed Rosaireville, NB-born, Montréal-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and Acadian icon Lisa LeBlanc will be releasing her sixth album Patchwork on February 5, 2027 through Bonsound. The roots of the album stretch from Moncton, New Brunswick to Lafayette, LA, two cities separated by about 2,200 miles/3,5000 kilometers, a distance that LeBlanc traveled in her van during a two month road trip. In the years leading up to the recording of Patchwork, Leblanc also spent time in Corsica, where she was struck by the rugged landscapes and in Ireland, where the cliffs and traditional music festivals brought her a new creative spark.

While nature plays a significant role for the album, LeBlanc channels her long-held love for 60s and 70s folk and rock to create a lush and rich tapestry of melodies, harmonies and grooves. The album also sees her drawing inspiration from traditional Cajun and Acadian music. The result is a sound that’s original, timeless — and singular. The album’s title is a nod to her grandmother, who, for over 50 years, has been making quilts meticulously from fabric scapes that weren’t originally meant to be sewn together.

Thematically, much like a travel journal, the new album offers observations of everyday life set to music with both sensitivity and humor.

Patchwork will include the previously released, rollicking “Whole Lotta Talkin‘” and the album’s second and latest single, the LeBlanc, Benoit Morier and Eric Heigle co-produced “Too Many Cooks.” A strutting and seamless blend of disco country, folk and Muscle Shoals-era soul “Too Many Cooks” may arguably the most playful and funky song LeBlanc has released to date, featuring contributions from Alabama Shakes‘ Ben Tanner and Dr. John‘s and Social Distortion‘s Ben Alleman on keys and piano; Sébastian Michaud on brass; Les Hôtesses d’Hilaire‘s Mico Roy on guitar; and Maxime Gosselin on drums. Based on the idiomatic phrase “too many cooks in the kitchen . . .,” “Too Many Cooks” points out what would happen when you’d have too many cooks in the kitchen: indecision, confusion, arguments, some sabotage, a wildly disgusting, poorly cooked meal and pissed off dinner guests.

“The music video for ‘Too Many Cooks’ is inspired by a reality cooking show where contestants host the other participants in their homes,” explains LeBlanc. “I’m competing against little mischievous puppets who are trying to sabotage my chances to win. Based on the turn of phrase ‘Too many cooks in the kitchen,’ it’s a quirky, kinda funky, kinda country fun tune!”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video Helena Deland Shares Shimmering “Tip of My Tongue”

2020’s debut studio album, Someone New, which was released by Luminelle Recordings introduced Montréal-based singer/songwriter and musician Helana Deland as a new and resonant voice to both the local and national indie scenes. She explored new soundscapes by teaming up with fellow Montréaler Ouri in the collaborative project Hildegard, which released two albums, 2021’s self-titled debut and 2024’s Jour 1596. And adding to a growing profile, Deland has collaborated with Men I Trust, JPEGMAFIA, Jonah Yano, Sam Evian, claire rousay and a lengthy list of others. During a remarkably busy period, Deland released her acclaimed sophomore solo album, 2024’s Goodnight Summerland through Chivi Chivi.

After opening for Weyes Blood, Andy Shauf, Connan Mockasin, Soccer Mommy and Iggy Pop, Deland supported her sophomore album with touring across North America and Europe.

Her highly anticipated third album, Eternity Shrugs is slated for a January 22, 2027 release through Chivi Chivi. Produced by Deland with longtime bandmates Francis Ledoux and Alexandre Larin, as well frequent collaborators Lysandre Ménard and Cedric Martel, Eternity Shrugs was recorded in rural Québec in bursts over four seasons. Piano, bass, organ, viola and woodwinds gather around her vocal and guitar in patient arrangements anchored by finely textured percussion. The result are songs that feel sparse one moment and subtly ornate the next. Deland imagines the album’s palette in browns — wood, leather, smoke. Warm and inhabited, the music never entirely settles.

Eternity Shrugs will include the previously released “How Do You Like Me Now,” and the album’s latest single “Tip of My Tongue.” “Tip of My Tongue” is a shimmering, dream pop-like tune featuring Deland’s breathy and expressive delivery floating over an vibey, autumnal arrangement of jangling acoustic guitar, bursts of shimmering synths, a gently chugging rhythm section driven by a simple yet propulsive drum pattern. But at its core is something left unsaid, an inner conversation between people with an intimate connection that has become a bit awkward yet still deeply familiar.

“I’m thinking of a long-awaited, momentous run-in, the kind that has kept a part of the mind alert,” Deland says. “Maybe you need to privately navigate how up-to-date on the other person’s life you’ve remained since the last time you spoke, or maybe you know a former version of them so well that the present-day one feels entirely, surprisingly familiar. The song was arranged with that feeling of familiarity in mind, like something that has been on the tip of my tongue for a long time.”

Directed by Jodi Heartz and Alex Blouin, the accompanying video for “Tip of My Tongue” is a dreamily surreal scenario that features Deland and her bandmates playing cards on a Montréal rooftop at a table set for 5. We see Deland as she delicately slides between both sides of the table, glancing at her hand of cards.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Warhaus Shares Thumping, Club Friendly “One Day”

Belgian singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Maarten Delvodere is the co-lead vocalist and one-half of the songwriting team behind the acclaimed JOVM mainstay outfit Balthazar — and he’s the creative mastermind behind the equally acclaimed JOVM mainstay project Warhaus.

Devoldere’s fifth Warhaus album The Donkey is slated for a January 15, 2027 release through Play It Again Sam. The Donkey is reportedly Belvedere’s most raw and instinctive Warhuas effort of his career to date. As the backstory to the album goes: Delvodere was at home with his girlfriend and his dog, happy, calm and super zen. Nothing but peace and quiet in his life. But an overdose of peace of mind can be dangerous too; that’s how much energy came pouring out when he started writing the material which would eventually comprise The Donkey.

The filter was gone, the anesthetic had worn off and suddenly he wanted something else — something rawer, something perhaps more real? For years, he had churned out a collection of dandyish pop with each song better than the last with an almost insulting ease. So he wondered: what if he threw those beautiful, golden melodies out the window and wrought the primal urges lurking inside his chest?

The Donkey will include the previously released “The Baby” and “Simple Pleasures,” as well as the album’s third and latests single “One Day.” “One Day” is a swaggering, industrial-leaning banger, built around tweeter and woofer rattling beats, twinkling keys, and arpeggiated synth breaks beneath Devoldere’s punchy yet melodic delivery. It may arguably be the most invigorated and primal tune of Devoldere’s growing catalog. At it score, the song sees the JOVM mainstay playing with contrasting moods. pairing the familiar tropes and language of a love song with an uneasy, tense soundscape.

Devoldere explains that “I wanted the band to sound like a DJ. I wanted the love song to sound like a threat.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: GOODTWIN Shares Breezy and Sultry “Roadside”

Led by Augusta “Gus” Alexander, indie pop project GOODTWIN derives its name as an ode to Alexander’s very good twin sister. And with the release of handful of singles over the past two years, the […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Sam Zalta Shares Shimmering “I Might Die Tonight”

Over the past decade, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sam Zalta is best known as a touring member of JOVM mainstays Bambara, an act that has toured alongside the likes of Foo Fighters, IDLES, Gilla Band, fellow JOVM mainstays METZ and Algiers.

As a solo artist, Zalta’s work occupies a world entirely his own, one increasingly shaped by elaborate storytelling, recurring characters, dreams, devotion and the uneasy space where beauty and pain meet over the course of four albums, 2015’s Paraiso Terminal, 2017’s o, 2019’s It All Ends The Same and 2023’s Memento Mori. The Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist crafts songs that feel superficially soothing but underneath is something more unsettled and stranger that sonically draws from dream pop, shoegaze, indie pop and the likes of The Beach Boys, Spiritualized, Big Star and Swans.

Zalta’s latest releases finds him pushing further into orchestration, narrative and world-building while still being anchored around his penchant for melodicism.

His latest single “I Might Die Tonight” is a shimmering tune that sonically brings Caveman, Tunnel of Love-era Bruce Springsteen and Cocteau Twins to mind and while expressing an aching yearning, there’s a churning unease just under the surface.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: SAOL Shares Earnest and Rousingly Anthemic “Lines”

Irish singer/songwriter and musician Zoë Gough is the creative mastermind of the recording project SAOL, a project that showcases a genre-bending sound that weaves elements of shoegaze, indie rock and grunge paired with vivid lyricism, catchy hooks and an uncanny knack for melodicism. The project is rooted in Gough’s dedication to engaging with music as a social platform while documenting her journey to situating herself within an Ireland that has undergone rapid change while holding onto the strands of the past that tie together the future and finding a way forward.

Gough’s work with SAOL has been played on RTE, RTE 2xm, Galway City Flirt FM and has received national radio play on Ireland’s Radio Nova while drawing comparisons to Hole, The Cranberries, My Bloody Valentine, Sinead O’Connor, and Garbage.

The Irish artist’s latest single “Lines”is a hook-driven tune anchored around earnest songwriting and performances, rousingly anthemic sing along worthy hooks and choruses, fuzzy power chords paired with her powerhouse delivery. While drawing comparisons to Hole, The Cranberries, Smashing Pumpkins and contemporaries like Soccer Mommy and Snail Mail, “Lines” draws out the prolonged process of loss and reckons with being the one left alone.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Umeå’s Mi Von Ahn Shares Atmospheric “Yet All Drifts”

Over the course of two albums and four EPs, Umeå, Sweden-based singer/songwriter, musician and self-described sound artist Mi von Ahn creates evocative, dreamlike indie rock with intensity and presence that carries a introspective melancholy and a bit of northern Swedish wistful within a lush, dynamic soundscape in which stark open spaces meet inland forests. Her debut album, 2018’s Signals earned a Swedish GAFFA Award nomination for Best Newcomer. And adding to a now-established national profile, she has toured as an opener for The Soundtrack of Our Lives, Ane Brun, Loney Dear, and Christian Kjelvander.

The Umeå-based artist’s third album Delta Veins is slated for a November 6, 2026 release. Co-written and produced alongside Martin Hederos and Anton Sundell, the album sees Von Ahn pushing her sound into a new territory — widescreen and sweeping indie rock with trip-hop and shoegaze-inspired textures. The album’s material moves constantly between the personal and the collective, often without drawing a clear line between them. A song about holding onto an unsustainable relationship is, at the same time, a song about standing beside a burning climate crisis without acting, even while knowing better. Whether a song is about a relationship, identity, or the climate crisis, there’s an undercurrent of searching beneath it.

Delta Veins also marks the first time in the Swedish artist’s career that she has written and sung lyrics in multiple languages with passages in English, Swedish and Sámi woven together throughout the album.

Album single “Yet All Drifts” is a slow-burning tune that eschews conventional verse-chorus-verse song structures in order to let the song’s atmospheric and painterly, shoegazer-inspired textures settle into its own shape, paired with trip-hop-like breakbeats and the Swedish artist’s sultry delivery. Sonically, the result is a song that to my ears seems like a blend of 90s singer/songwriter pop rock like Joan Osbourne‘s “What If God Is One of Us?,” Portishead, Radiohaed and a bit of a A Storm in Heaven-era The Verve to create a song that’s intimate yet expansive, peaceful yet deeply restless, evoking a change that’s felt before they’re seen.

“The song is written from a dreamlike state that can arise when, instead of fighting it, you manage to accept the inevitable change and let yourself drift with it,” says Von Ahn. “On the surface everything is still, but underneath a slow, almost invisible shift is taking place. A sense that we are not victims of the change, we are the change.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Twin Temple Shares Breathtakingly Gorgeous “Nothing Matters”

Formed back in 2017, Twin Temple — married couple Alexandra and Zachary James — are an acclaimed Los Angeles-based duo, who specialize in a new sub-genre and style that they’ve dubbed “Satanic Doo Wop,” which blends their practice of Satanism with a sound that’s influenced by The Platters, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly and the like. 

The Los Angeles-based duo have developed for being one of the contemporary scene’s most talked about crossover acts, earning widespread coverage from media outlets like Rolling Stone, NME, Billboard, American Songwriter, Stereogum, Consequence, Revolver, Kerrang!, Metal Hammer, Loudwire, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times and a long list of others, and for being one of the most provocative acts out there right now. Their uncompromising artistic vision routinely sparks much larger and more serious conversations about artistic freedom, religious freedom, freedom of expression, censorship, the role of controversy in art, and on a broader sense, the wider role of art within the cultural landscape.

Now, some of y’all heard of the acclaimed Los Angeles-based duo after Charley Crockett abruptly dropped the band from his tour earlier this year — specifically because of their usage of Satanic imagery. That led to Jack White publicly inviting the band to open for his Los Angeles show back in September. And serendipitously, the duo’s highly-anticipated third album Doomed Lovers will come right on the heels of their latest, and arguably biggest controversy to date. 

Slated for an October 9, 2026 release through their own Pentagrammation Records, the Shooter Jennings-produced Doomed Lovers was recorded at Hollywood-based Sunset Sound‘s iconic Studio 3 and marks the acclaimed duo’s boldest chapter to date. 

Born from one of the darkest periods of their personal lives, Doomed Lovers is reportedly their most intimate and emotionally revealing work to date. Expanding upon the cinematic scope of the sound that has won them acclaim while remaining rooted in the timeless sound and traditions of early rock ‘n’ roll, the album is their most ambitious and fully realized artistic statement so far. The album continues the band’s commitment to analog recording while expanding upon their sound with lush orchestral arrangements performed by a 37-member orchestra. Yes, 37!

“We poured everything into this new record that we made with Shooter,” says the acclaimed and controversial duo. “We wanted to push ourselves creatively and expand the production further than we have before, drawing inspiration from the lush orchestral productions of Roy Orbison, The Ronettes, and The Shangri-Las, and added in some Countrypolitan flair. We brought in some incredible musicians like Matt Chamberlain and Jay Bellerose, and a 37-piece orchestra. We wanted to make something as beautiful as we possibly could – of course with our dark spin on things.”

The truth is, this album was made during one of the darkest periods of our lives. We had been struggling with grief, health issues, addiction, and depression. But day by day, going into Sunset Sound, making music with incredible people who believed in us, and being surrounded by that creativity slowly brought us back to life. We started smiling and laughing again. I was becoming alive again. It connected us to why we fell in love with music in the first place and became our most personal album yet.”

The album will include the previously released, “Doomed Lovers,” and “Haunt Me,” as well as the album’s last pre-release single “Nothing Matters.” “Nothing Matters” continues a remarkable run of breathtakingly gorgeous and cinematic material that to my ears at least, sounds a bit like a blend of Patsy Cline with Roy Orbison, anchored by a similar aching sense of loss and grief.

“‘Nothing Matters’ was born out of the bleakest, lowest point of depression and apathy following a devastating loss, functioning as a modern day Gothic lament for a love that refuses to die,” Twin Temple’s Alexandra and Zachary James say. “Channeling a kind of Nihilistic and Byronic romanticism, the song tackles the abject feelings of hopelessness, disorientation, and loss of self that profound grief evokes. We wanted to make something beautiful out of that experience, pairing the tragic narrative weight with the lush, cinematic sweep of a 37-piece orchestra.”