Paris-based Australian-French singer/songwriters, multi-instrumentalists and sibling duo Djakarta — Raphaël and Tristan Stuart — have received attention in their native France for crafting intimate yet hook-driven pop songs in which they mesh acoustic and electronic textures.
Slated for a November 2020 release, the duo’s forthcoming sophomore Stan Neff-produced EP Overseas is the first batch of original material from the duo in over three years. Inspired by wide-open spaces and cityscapes, the sibling duo’s experiences living in Europe and Australia, the EP’s material reportedly finds the duo crafting bittersweet yet sun-drenched pop that thematically question the routines and melancholy of city life.
Overseas‘ latest single, “Any Open Door” is a breezy yet brooding bit of pop, centered around an infectious hook, shimmering guitars, stuttering four-on-the-floor, a sinuous bass line and the duo’s plaintive vocals. Sonically, the song may find some listeners thinking of JOVM mainstays Tame Impala and CONES, as well as Phoenix and Air but underneath the breezy infectiousness of the song is the sort of bittersweet, melancholy that comes from the passing of time and the loss of innocence.
Directed by Baptiste Perrin, the recently released, animated video for “Any Open Door” features at trippy use of bright watercolors in which colors quickly morph into a variety of shapes including silhouettes of the Stuart Brothers, a man surfing and so on.