Kaelen Ohm (she/they) is a Canadian singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, actor and filmmaker. As a musician, Ohm has cut her teeth in a number of indie projects as a frontperson, guitarist and keyboard player — and as a result, she has shared stages with St. Vincent, RY X, Shannon and the Clams, Vance Joy, and Counting Crows. As an actor, Ohm has had a starring role in Netflix’s Hit and Run, and she has appeared in a number of American TV shows and films, including NBC’s Taken, MGM’s Condor, AMC’s Hell on Wheels, Lifetime’s Flint and Charles Wahl‘s award-winning short film Little Grey Bubbles, which screened at over 20 film festivals globally. She was also cast in season two of MGM+’s FROM.
Ohm’s latest multimedia project AMAARA initially began as a solo effort — and an outlet to express her own ethereal, dream pop sensibilities featuring reverb-soaked guitars, soaring synths and expansive percussion paired with haunting vocals. So far she has released her debut EP, 2017’s Black Moon and 2020’s sophomore EP Heartspeak, which was featured on NPR’s All Songs Considered and received positive reviews from Tower Records, Guitar Girl Mag, Exclaim! and a list of others.
Ohm’s AMAARA full-length debut Child of Venus is slated for a July 7, 2023 release through Lady Moon Records. The album is reportedly a culmination of a lifetime of artistic pursuits and a document of rediscovery and transition, in which the Canadian multi-disciplinary artist coming up for air as both an artist and as a human being truly reborn. Thematically, the album material reflects on love and loss, the healing power of pure psychedelia and the act of connecting with her inner child, which has led her to reflect on her own adolescence. “I’ve been on a journey of looking into my own childhood conditioning, and the notion of unbounded creative genius as well as where that goes wrong in adolescence,” Ohm explains. Sonically, Child of Venus‘ material is classic dream pop but also draws from jazz, R&B and folk — while further cementing the sound that has won her praise both in her native Canada and internationally.
Child of Venus‘ first single, “New Love’s Mortal Coil” is a slickly produced. atmospheric bop that sounds indebted to 80s synth pop and hip-hop but rooted in modern production. The song is built around shimmering synths, skittering beats and thumping reverb-soaked 808s, reverb-soaked bursts of guitar, Ohm’s yearning delivery paired with an incredibly catchy hook. But under the slick production is earnest yet somewhat playfully cheeky lyricism born from seemingly lived-in experience.
“I was walking back to the studio one day in the Spring of 2021 and found myself sining this cheeky song about projection and what happens in anew relationship when the first stages begin to fade,” Ohm explains. I recently learned the word limerence and, nearly two years later, it turns out to be a primary theme of what my new single, ‘New Love’s Mortal Coil,’ is about.
The Canadian multidisciplinary artist explains that limerence is a term used in psychology and is defined as “the state of being infatuated or obsessed with another person, typically experienced voluntarily and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of one’s feelings, but not primarily for a sexual relationship,” Ohm says. “I also wanted to speak to the law of impermanence and how it can apply to new love – what happens when we attach to a dream or an expectation that things will go a particular way… It’s a very real thing and it can rob the connection of organically evolving to its natural potential.”
Directed by the Canadian artist, the accompanying video for “New Love’s Mortal Coil” is a surrealistic yet cinematically shot fever dream with a vibrant color scheme that features Ohm and a collection of dancers in neon-colored 80s-styled suits performing a series of choreographed moves throughout various locations in Los Angeles.