Category: Synth Pop

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Rising Hungarian Electro Pop Duo Belau Releases a Gorgeous and Mind-Bending Visual for Atmospheric “Rapture”

With the release of their first single, “Island of Promise,” the Budapest, Hungary-based electronic music production and artist duo Belau — Peter Kedves and Buzas Krisztian — quickly received attention across their native Hungary for a buoyant, summery and dance floor friendly sound meant to evoke “cheerful places, filled with sunshine, where one can relax, unwind and find peace and harmony,” as the duo explain in press notes. “Island of Promise” eventually landed #1 on Deezer Hungary, one of the country’s biggest streaming services — and since its release, has not only amassed over 500,000 streams, the song was featured in HBO Hungary series Aranyélet and in an international Pepsi ad campaign shown in 33 countries.

Building upon a growing profile, the duo’s 2016 full-length debut The Odyssey won the Hungarian Grammy for Best Electronic Music Album. The duo supported the album with an intense, two year period of touring int hick they played over 120 shows in 19 countries, as well as appearances at Eurosonic,Sziget, Reeperbahn, Untold, and SXSW. Since the release of The Odyssey, the Hungarian electro pop duo have released a series of remixes of material off The Odyssey, as well as handful of singles that included 2018’s “Breath,” a sultry, dance floor friendly collaboration with Sophie Lindinger centered around a slick, dance floor friendly production featuring glitchy beats, and a sinuous yet incredibly anthemic hook — and the Massive Attack-like “Natural Pool.’ 

The Hungarian duo’s sophomore album Colourwave is slated for a May 29, 2020 release, and the album reportedly finds the duo furthering the sound that won them attention both nationally and internationally, so listeners should expect more chilled out material centered around shimmering synths, 808s and chilled beats. The album’s first single “Rapture” continues a run of  downtempo electronica and trip hop -like material by the duo, centered around an atmospheric and dreamy production of shimmering synths, twinkling percussion, wobbling low end and Blue Foundation’s Kirstine Stubbe Teglbjærg contributing sultry yet ethereal vocals 

Inspired by nature’s immense power, “Rapture” as the duo notes was written as a wish to put put an end to forcing things without taking larger signals and patterns into consideration. The song actually expresses a longing to have life unfold in a completely different way — one that’s more free, open, self-loving and enjoyable. 

The recently released video for “Rapture” takes the viewer on a gorgeous and mind-bending journey through the ocean then time and space: the video begins by taking us deep under the sea — but it turns out to be an aquarium in a pet shop. A boy buys a turtle in the aquarium, and decides to set the turtle free. We then follow the turtle on its adventures through the open sea before pulling out to a global and then universal scale. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lillian Frances’ Brightly Colored and Summery Visual for Infectious Pop Banger “Raincheck Summer”

Lillian Frances is a Davis, CA-based singer/songwriter, producer and self-described “sonic collager.” Inspired by the creative nature of children, Frances’ work isn’t bound to genre or style conventions: her work frequently meshes and blurs lines between a variety of genres and styles within the same song with shapeshifting aplomb — and Frances pairs that with lyrics sung in English and Spanish. 

Developing a sound that some have compared favorably to Lorde, Sylvan Esso, and Billie Eilish, Frances’ 2018 effort Timeism EP was released to praise from NPR’s Heavy Rotation, Indie Shuffle, and Cap Radio. Frances has opened for Sylvan Esso and played alongside Shakey Graves, Sage the Gemini, and Lexi Panterra. Additionally, she has made appearances at a number of regional festivals, including Sacramento PorchFest, the Davis Music Festival and the Davis Cherry Blossom Festival among others. 

Building upon a growing profile, Frances’ full-length debut Moonrise Queendom is slated for a June 5, 2020 release, and the album’s first single “Raincheck Summer” is a breezy and forward thinking pop confection featuring wobbling low end,  twinkling and clattering polyrhythm,  bursts of shimmering and emotive cellos, an infectious hook and Frances’ sultry vocals.  Centered around a coquettish and mischievous push and pull, the track is a summertime anthem — albeit, an oddly quarantine appropriate song in which you never quite hang out with anyone. And yet underlying its bold playfulness, the song as Frances explains, “explores the idea of authentic connection.” 

Directed by Lillian Frances, the recently released video employs a bright color palette as we follow Frances riding a bike, playing in a pool, in front of a childhood lemonade stand  and sunbathing bringing back memories of past summers. Of course, throughout the entire course of the video, we see the Davis-based singer/songwriter completely alone, which is strangely appropriate for what may be a quarantined summer for a lot of us. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Westerman’s Atmospheric Meditation on Moral Relativism

With the release of his critically acclaimed Bullion-produced debut EP, Ark, the London-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Will Westerman, best known as Westerman, received national and international attention for writing material that thematically grapes with societal confines and other issues over a shapeshifting electronic backdrops. Building upon a growing profile, Westerman’s highly-anticipated full-length debut Your Hero Is Not Dead is slated for a June 5, 2020 release through Play It Again Sam and Partisan Records, across North America.

Continuing his ongoing collaboration with Bullion (a.k.a. Nathan Jenkins), Your Hero Is Not Dead was recorded in Southern Portugal and finished in London. Thematically, the album is about empathy and compassion, struggle and release, and all the ways we contradict and battle within ourselves on a daily basis — and as a result, the material is centered around moral, political and ethical gray areas with narrators, who attempt to resolve larger external issues by looking inward. Your Hero Is Not Dead’s fifth and latest single, “The Line” is brooding and atmospheric track featuring gentle layers of shimmering synth arpeggios, strummed guitar, the rising London-based artist’s expressive falsetto and a soaring hook. And while bearing a subtle resemblance to Peter Gabriel’s Security and Peter Gabriel 3, the song as Westerman explains was inspired by this thoughts on moral relativism.

“I was thinking about moral relativism when I wrote this,” Westerman says in press notes. “The ever-shifting parameters of what is and isn’t acceptable. This applies to many things – gender, human rights, parenting, politics. I don’t believe that this means there’s no right and wrong, but normative values are constantly in flux – hopefully as we continue to be more compassionate.” 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: I Break Horses Releases a Brooding and Lonely Visual for “Depression Tourist”

Led by frontwoman Maria Linden and featuring Fredrik Balak, the Stockholm-based indie act I Break Horses have released two critically applauded albums: 2011’s full-length debut Hearts received praise from Pitchfork, The Guardian, NME, The Independent and others for material that possessed a luxurious grandeur and 2014’s Chiaroscuro, which found Linden crafting ambitious material with a cool, self-assuredness. Building upon a growing profile, Linden and Balak toured with M83 and Sigur Ros— and U2 played “Winter Beats” before their stage entrance during 2018’s Experience + Innocence tour.

Released yesterday through Bella Union, I Break Horses’ long-awaited third album Warnings was centered around Linden’s desire to take the time to make something entirely different — crafting martial with a strong emphasis on instrumental, cinematic music.  Much of the album’s material can trace its origins back to Linden watching a collection of her favorite films on her computer with the sound muted. As she did so, she began to make her own soundtrack sketches — and those initial sketches gradually evolved int songs. “It wasn’t until I felt an urge to add vocals and lyrics,” Linden says, “that I realized I was making a new I Break Horses album.

Sonically, the album’s material consists of lush and sumptuously layered soundscapes featuring dreamy mellotrons, haunting loops, analog synths and layered vocals meant to create an immersive, dramatic tension on multiple levels. “It’s not a political album,” says Lindén, “though it relates to the alarmist times we live in. Each song is a subtle warning of something not being quite right.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the album’s creative process was also centered around several different dramas of its own:  “It has been some time in the making. About six years, involving several studios, collaborations that didn’t work out, a crashed hard drive with about two years of work, writing new material again instead of trying to repair it. New studio recordings, erasing everything, then recording most of the album myself at home…” Linden says in press notes.

Warnings also finds Linden collaborating with producer and mixing engineer Chris Coady, who has worked with the likes of Beach House and TV on the Radio. But his experience and expertise with dense and cinematic sound wasn’t the only reason Linden recruited him to mix the album. “Before reaching out to Chris I read an interview where he said, ‘I like to slow things down. Almost every time I love the sound of something slowed down by half, but sometimes 500% you can get interesting shapes and textures.’ And I just knew he’d be the right person for this album.”

“Nowadays, the attention span equals nothing when it comes to how most people consume music,” Lindén adds. “And it feels like songs are getting shorter, more ‘efficient.’ I felt an urge to go against that and create an album journey from start to finish that takes time and patience to listen to. Like, slow the fuck down!”

Now, as you may recall, I wrote about “Neon Lights,” Warnings third single, a lush and cinematic track that managed to recall Trans Europe Express-era Kraftwerk and the Stranger Things soundtrack with a much-needed we-re-all-in-this-together air.  “Depression Tourist,” Warnings’ latest single is an eerie and atmospheric track, centered around a sparse arrangement of shimmering and ethereal synths and Linden’s voice fed through vocoder and other effects. And as a result, the song feels intimate and lonely, yet otherworldly. 

“I wanted this song to sound as if it was broadcasted from space, the loneliest place I could imagine,” Linden explains. “As I obviously couldn’t perform it up there I filmed this version in the loneliest field I could find in Malta.” Shot in black and white, the recently released live session features Linden and a synthesizer in the middle of a windswept corn field. The concept my be simple but it’s gorgeous and evocative. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Cut Copy Releases a Meditative Visual for Slow-burning New Single “Love Is All We Share”

Initially starting as a bedroom, solo recording project of its Melbourne, Australia-based founding member and frontman Dan Whitfield and expanding into a full-fledge band with Tim Hoey (guitar), Mitchell Scott (drums) and Ben Browning (bass), the acclaimed indie electro pop act Cut Copy have been one of their homeland’s most successful and well-regarded acts over their nearly 20 years together. 2008’s In Ghost Colours, which featured standout singles “Lights & Music” and “Hearts on Fire,” received nominations for ARIA’s Best Dance/Electronic Album and Album of the Year at the J Awards. 2011’s Zonoscope topped the ARIA charts, was nominated for a Best Dance/Electronic Album at that year’s Grammy Awards and won a Best Dance Release ARIA Award. Adding to an enormous, internationally known profile, the members of Cut Copy have gone on a number of successful national and international tours, and have made appearances on the late night TV circuit, including stops on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel Live!

2017’s Haiku From Zero was released to international critical applause and was named a Double J Feature Album. But interestingly enough, “Love Is All We Share,” the acclaimed Aussie act’s latest single is the first batch of new material from the band in three years. and the single is a decided departure from the thumping, club anthems that have won them attention internationally. The song is a slow-burning, intimate, and atmospheric track, centered around a sparse arrangement featuring gentle layers of shimmering synths, Dan Whitfield’s plaintive vocals and shuffling beats. Evoking the euphoric highs of love, our seemingly insatiable desire for connection and physical touch, the song finds Cut Copy crafting a Quiet Storm-inspired take on synth pop that’s eerie and timely. Certainly, in a world in which even being near your friends and loved ones takes on a heightened significance and risk, love in all forms takes on a completely different meaning. 

“’Love Is All We Share’ is a song we made using only a handful of sounds, hoping to create an intimate and unworldly atmosphere,” Cut Copy’s dan Whitfield says in press notes “It was written a year ago about the anxieties of imagined future times, as technology becomes more all-consuming. But in light of recent events the song took on an eerie significance. Now, with our immediate future uncertain and people the world over self isolating, ‘love’ more than ever, feels like one of the best things we can share.”

Directed by American contemporary artist Takeshi Murata, the recently released video for “Love Is All We Share” communicates the track’s themes through his work in hyper-realism and computer-simulated imagery. The end result is a mesmerizing and hypnotic visual of interconnected digital, floating bubbles. “Of the ideas we had, the floating bubbles stood out – representing elements of the song best with animation that’s meditative,” Murata says. “For me, the bubbles point to our relationships and their fragility, relevant to the lyrics and time.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Over the past five or six months, I’ve managed to spill quite a bit of virtual ink covering the rising French electronic music artist, producer and JOVM mainstay LutchamaK. Now, as you may recall, the rising French artist grew up as a voracious music listener and fan, who has had long eclectic and wide-ranging tastes that includes hip-hop, rock, techno and others. And while his work is deeply influenced from and draws from techno, it also reflects a lifelong devotion to a eclecticism: his first two EPs, which he managed to create during lunch breaks at his day job featured material that meshed elements of techno, house and EDM among others.

The French JOVM mainstay has developed a reputation for being remarkably prolific, frequently releasing new material with a number of EPs, including one of his most recent EPs Kodama. “Music Box,” Kodama EP‘s latest single is centered around tweeter and woofer rocking low end, thumping beats, explosive blast of rimshot and hi-hat, relentless synth stabs, a looped sample of a kalimba, which manages to sound much like a music box and a vocal sample that simply says “We are the weapons.” While being a mid-tempo techno track the track manages to sound as though it were inspired by Tour De France-era Kraftwerk and Boys Noize — forward-thinking yet accessible and dance floor friendly.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Rapidly Rising Act Carré Releases a Lysergic Visual for Club Banging “Urgency”

Carré is a rapidly rising Los Angeles-based indie electro rock act featuring:

Julien Boyé (drums, percussion, vocals): Boyé has had stints as a touring member of Nouvelle Vague and James Supercave. Additionally, he has a solo recording act Acoustic Resistance, in which he employs rare instruments, which he has collected from all over the world.
Jules de Gasperis (drums, vocals, synths, production and mixing): de Gasperis is a Paris-born, Los Angeles-based studio owner. Growing up in Paris, he sharpened his knowledge of synthesizers, looping machines and other electronics around the same time that Justice, Soulwax and Ed Banger Records exploded into the mainstream.
Kevin Baudouin (guitar, vocals, synth, production): Baudouin has lived in Los Angeles the longest of the trio — 10 years — and he has played with a number of psych rock acts, developing a uniquely edgy approach to guitar, influenced by Nels Cline, Jonny Greenwood and Marc Ribot.
Deriving their name for the French word for “playing tight” and “on point,” the Los Angeles-based trio formed last year — and as the band’s Jules de Gasperis explains in press notes, “The making of our band started with this whole idea of having two drummers perform together. It felt like a statement. We always wanted to keep people moving and tend to focus on the beats first when we write.”

The act specializes in a French electronica-inspired sound that blends aggressive, dark and chaotic elements with hypnotic drum loops while thematically, their work generally touches upon conception, abstraction and distortion of reality centered around geometric shapes and patterns, and a surrealistic outlook on our world.

Released earlier this year, the Los Angeles-based trio’s debut single “This is not a band” was a propulsive, club banger that sonically brought Factory Floor, The Rapture, Primal Scream, Kasabian, The Chemical Brothers and The Crystal Method to mind— but with a primal and furious intensity. Building upon the momentum of their debut single, the rising trio’s second and latest single is the dark and seductive, “Urgency.” Centered around a bed of  tweeter and woofer rocking beats, layers of shimmering synth arpeggios, bursts of slashing guitars and gauzy electronic textures — while words from Terence McKenna hover ethereally. Continuing an ongoing run of hypnotic, thumping, club rocking material, the new single possess a menacing air that brings Ministry and early Nine Inch Nails to mind. 

Directed by Patrick Fogarty, the recently released video for “Urgency” manages to continue the trio’s ongoing collaboration with the directer is a slick synthesis of live action footage and CGI-based graphics that evoke a lysergic journey through the subconscious. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: French Producer Sory Releases a Cinematic and Retro-futuristic New Single

Deriving his name from a French word for “tawny,” an orange-brown or yellowish-brown, Sory is a mysterious and emerging Parisian electronic music producer and electronic music artist, who has started to receive attention for a sound that’s heavily influenced by electro pop and electro funk. Thematically, the French producer and artist’s work draws from his lifelong obsession with robots — with the material taking the listener on an intergalactic future in which humanity is at one with machinery. 

Last month, Sory released his debut EP, the four song Fall ‘N’ Rise,  which featured lead single “Sitting on a cloud.” “Sitting on a cloud” gave a hint at what listeners should expect from the effort: slickly produced electro pop that nodded at funk and disco, centered around vocodored vocals. The EP’s second and latest track, the cinematic “Cyberpunk attack” is centered around shimmering synth arpeggios, thumping beats, four-on-the floor drumming and an enormous hook. Arguably, the most retro-futuristic of Fall ‘N’ Rise’s four tracks, “Cyberpunk attack” manages to bring Daft Punk, Giorgio Moroder and John Carpenter soundtracks to mind. That shouldn’t be surprising: the song imagines an attack in which humans are captured and made into cyborgs through the implantation of bio-mechanical components. In the case the song’s composer imagines a future in which a memory chip that captures the entirety of his personality, memory, talents and history was implanted in his brain. The track asks if that were to happen, how does one regain their humanity and soul? 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

felte · Houses of Heaven – Dissolve The Floor

With the release of their debut EP Remnant, the Oakland-based electronic act, Houses of Heaven — Kevin Tecon, Adam Beck and Nick Ott — quickly established their sound: centered around layers of synths, guitar, electronic percussion and drums, the act meshes early industrial and techno rhythms with shoegaze melodicism and dub-influenced effects.

Building upon a growing profile, the Bay Area-based trio’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, the Matia Simovich-produced Silent Places is slated for a digital release through Felte Records on Friday and a vinyl release on May 22, 2020. The album’s material was written against the backdrop of the Northern California wildfires, expanding tent cities, the rampant greed and gentrification in San Francisco that has resulted in empty, luxury high-rises — and thematically, the album explores the intimate experiences that transpire within the chaotic and uncertain confines of everyday modern life.

“Dissolve The Floor,”Silent Places first single is the arguably the album’s most dance floor friendly song. Centered around a pulsing synth arpeggios, industrial clang and clatter, muscular techno beats, woozy tape delay, an enormous hook and  emotionally detached vocals, “Dissolve The Floor” recalls early Depeche Mode, Factory Floor and others — but with an underlying  and shadowy sense of menace and unease.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: New Orleans’ Video Age Releases an 80s Synth Pop-Inspired Banger

With the release of their first two albums, 2016’s full-length debut Living Alone and 2018’s sophomore album Pop Therapy, the New Orleans-based act Video Age — founding members Ross Farbe and Ray Micarelli, along with Nick Corson and Duncan Troast — received attention for crafting hook-driven material with a decidedly 80s synth pop-inspired sound. 

Following the release of Pop Therapy, the band’s songwriting partners and co-founders Farbe and Micarelli were eager to write new material and continue upon the momentum they had just started to build up. The quartet convened at Farbe’s home studio to begin to work on their highly-anticipated third full-length album, which will be released through Winspear, who recently signed the band. 

Video Age’s first single of 2020, “Shadow On The Wall” further establishes the band’s 80s synth pop-inspired sound as its centered around shimmering synth arpeggios, Nile Rodgers-like funk guitar, a sinuous bass line, vintage drum machine, some cowbell and an infectious hook. Sonically, the song reminds me of Tom Tom Club, Talking Heads and early Madonna with a subtle hint at 70s AM rock — and while dance floor friendly, the song manages to hint at something much darker under the surface. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lucas Minier-directed Visual for Tastycool’s “Velvet” Follows the Daily Life of a Young Artist

Tastycool is an emerging Angoulême, France-based indie electro pop duo — Victor Barougier and Tom Meyronnin — that specializes in a sound that draws from house music, funk, nu disco and electro pop. The duo’s latest EP, Luved is slated for a May 8, 2020 release, and the EP’s latest single “Velvet” is a summery club banger. Centered around shimmering synth arpeggios, finger snaps, insistently thumping beats, a sinuous bass line, a sultry saxophone solo, an infectious hook and ethereally sung lyrics in French, the track brings Daft Punk, Air, Phoenix, and Polo & Pan to mind — but while possessing a swooning sensitivity. Interestingly, the song is written for a local artist Ykoner, who through his art uncovers his once-hidden sensitivity. 

Directed by Lucas Minier, and shot in Tours, France, the recently released video for “Velvet,” continues their ongoing collaboration with the director while following a young graffiti artist — in this case, Ykoner himself — through his daily routine. As the duo mention in press notes, as a result of the quarantines across the globe, Minier and the duo had to rethink the filming of the video, discreetly going through Tours, stealing shots when they could until they were able to finish. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: French Electronic Project VAPA teams up with VoxAxoV’s Charlotte Cegerra on a Sultry Club Banger

Formed in 2017, VAPA (an acronym for the French phrase Vous n’Avez Pas d’Avis, which translates into English as “You Have No Opinion”) is an emerging French electronic music collective that’s inspired by what the French journalist Jean-Yves Leloup has dubbed “conscious dance floor,” the project aims to bring people together through music but while addressing larger social issues, linking the hedonism and freedom of the party to the seriousness of our age — with a hint of optimism.  

The project’s sound draws influences from Thylacine, Jon Hopkins, Agoria, and Essaie Pas but paired with the voices of personalities, fellow musicians and journalists as a way to  to take an honest look at the world, to raise questions and our fears as a way to push the listener into action. “An introspective quest put into words and melodies!” VAPA’s mysterious creative mastermind says in press notes. 

VAPA’s latest single “Nuages Oranges” is an eerily atmospheric track and sensual track centered around shimmering and squiggling synth arpeggios, rapid-fire beats, a dance floor rocking hook and the dreamily sultry French vocals of VoxAxoV’s Charlotte Cegarra. And while sonically bearing a resemblance to Octo Octa’s Between Two Selves and From Here to Eternity and From Here to Eternity . . . And Back-era Giorgio Moroder, the track focuses on the climate crisis, exile, existential anguish in the face of the world that’s adrift — and then hope. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Montreal’s KROY Releases a Slick and Darkly Seductive New Single

Camille Poliquin is a Montreal-based singer/songwriter, electronic music artist and producer who’s the creative mastermind behind the rising indie electro pop recording project KROY. Over the past couple of years, Poliquin has released material written and sung in both English and French, including her Max-Antoine Poulin-Gendron co-produced single “Chevy 85.”

Poliquin’s first KROY single of this year, “OPINEL” continues her ongoing collaboration with Poulin-Gendron, who returns to co-produce the new single. Centered around a lush, and hyper modern production consisting of twinkling keys, shimmering synth arpeggios, rumbling low end, stuttering beats, Poliquin’s plaintive vocals and an enormous bass drop, the track reveals intense contradictions rooted in heartache and bitterness with the song describing the push and pull of a dysfunctional and confusion relationship.

The track derives its name from a brand of pocket knives that Poliquin is fond of, Opinel, which can be used “for a lovely picnic in the park with Manchego and two-year-old Louis d’Or cheeses or as a murderous weapon of self-defence,” Poliquin says. “It’s a choice accessory for a Gemini, if you ask me.”

“This song came to me in a very strange moment, while I was in the process of recovering from depression,” Poliquin adds. “I was an emotional wreck, and I felt like I didn’t have control over anything. It was also the first time I felt like I was writing something from a place of pain. It’s my favourite sensation.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Zoë Moss is an up-and-coming New York-based singer/songwriter and pop artist. Six weeks after she moved to New York, Moss got hit by a cab — and in many ways that was when her creative life truly began. The following years were a blur: partially as a result of the concussion she suffered when she got hit by that cab, and as a result of her involvement in New York’s music and art scenes.

Moss entered into a highly experimental period in which she found her sound and aesthetic transforming as she began meshing the production styles of hip-hop and pop with indie rock melodicism, eventually landing upon a sound that’s a seamless synthesis of grunge rock and electro pop. “New York City – more than anything – inspires the way I make music,” Moss says in press notes. “I love embracing the grittier sides of the city in my music. I feel like it parallels my personality. There’s a side to New York that is social and dynamic. But then there is an underbelly that will devour you if you’re not careful.”

Back in 2014, Moss attended the Clive Davis Institute and while there, she landed her first label placement, writing the folk pop tune “Sinner” for Andy Grammer. The following year, she was hospitalized for an Adderall overdose and was committed to a mental ward for several hours, swearing she didn’t do “it” — whatever “it” was. Since then, the New York-based singer/songwriter and pop artist has co-written, co-produced or lent her vocals for tracks for Grace VanderWaal, Brooks,Mothica, Jordyn Jones, Fly By Midnight and has participated in sessions with Larzz Principato, Ido Zmishlany,Andy Seltzer, Scott Harris, SoFly and Nius, Mike Campbell, The XI/The Eleven and Daytrip.

Moss is stepping out into the limelight as a solo artist  with the release of debut EP Stories through her own label She’s No Good. Thematically, the EP’s even songs give the listener an intimate look into the life of a 20 something musician and free-spirit. The soon-to-be released EP’s first single, “Operator” swaggering and self-assured track centered around a slick, club friendly production consisting of thumping beats, synth arpeggios, twinkling keys and an enormous hook.  But what makes the single interesting to me is how the song finds Moss boldly and unapologetically announcing — and asserting — her presence. Moss is here and she’s gearing up to kick ass and take names.

“The Operator is a song about confidence,” Moss explains. “Before writing Stories I was writing music for other artists in New York and Los Angeles. Very happily I may add. I’ve been fortunate enough to write across many genres with many different perspectives. But for the longest time, I was unconsciously searching for an artist to create this particular sound. It dawned on me finally, that I can be that artist. So I decided to find the confidence to be that artist myself.”